For the crew
All the glory of sidewalk conversations,
four o’clock antemeridian.
Five of us: Kicking pebbles
Half bored
Half stoned
Half in love with the world
And “we ain’t leaving till six in the morn-
in” hale:
The smell of the forest
and the swell of fog, its cool lips wrapping around the cricketpulsing
field, the frisbee-floating joint-smoke of
the middle ages of our childhood.
The must
that collects in old drawers in my old room,
with old journals’ commandments: thou shalt remember
the must of old ideas.
Like:
Thou Must haveth un-believable un-speakable mind-blowing head-throwing-back heart-stopping eyeball-popping insecurity-curing intercourse…
Or at least just have sex
(check)
Thou Must groweth the coolest facial hair known or grown to man, preferably in the form of a Soul Patch…
Or at least just grow a beard
(still a few soulwrenching patches away)
You Must remain as a glass to catch drops of your friends’ spirits
(Be there and ready to pour a few back when they are low)
Like the arms of oaks embracing desperate over the far end of our flat Ohio street where Maddy and Erin pretended
to see a raccoon because they didn’t want to come inside and where
Hello Ohio hits play in my mind
from all of the times I hit play on my [brother’s] iPod:
portable speakers import from an hour South sounds of real-time nostalgia
For I [too] know Ohio like the back of my hand
Over the Rhine lacing our veins with elegies of cheapwine mourn-
in’ case by case
by fourteen dollar case.
I didn’t know what a strip pit is
but my throat still dripped tragic
Because I was a good son
and I hadn’t lost my life yet.
(Still haven’t).
Run naked, young men, on the golf course
not a golf course since a few months after
The Drinking Gourd stopped dripping stars.
Write epic, young men, through the bars of New York
the streets of India,
here back in town
Jazz Clubs in Denmark
the mountains of Peru
the coasts of the Pacific Northwest
and the alleys of Jerusalem.
Inhale your small village epic.
The Leftern Wall 