That Very Night, Something Astonishing Happened

I've got my game face on
but the night's rough trade,
and I'll break you, boy, soon as

love you.
When I was young enough

not to know, we walked the
rumpled streets, breathed
the laundry breeze, shared

tales of mind tests
ministered by robots,
and you turned to say to me

There's a kind of acid called
Window Pane, and the pretty
girl, your lover, she says,

Whatever it is, it's killing the
trees, and I knew right then,
not able to identify it, but

knew that this was as close to
Paradise as I'd ever walk.

 

 

Runaway

The leaves were floating downriver
and the homeless moving south
the afternoon I saw him;
lost boy under bridge,
hair in colorless tufts of filth.

I went down to him
and the rocks under our feet
were unkissed by sun.
We found a paper apology written by some drifter
and I read it to him like an alibi
for my life before this.

He took me there
below pigeon-streaked eaves,
and the way he clutched me
he might have thought it was rape,
but I stared at the blackness exploding behind my eyes
and prayed he'd never let go.