Snow, Tree Forts & Alcohol

There were rock battles in the claymines.
Shingle tile fights in the tree forts.
Crabapple wars in the backyards.

The one kid with a ridiculous last name
that was a foodstuff that doubled as yet
another slang word for penis killed his
girlfriend while the rest of us were
sort of thinking about college.

The one brother of the guy who put his
cousin's eye out with a whipped roof
shingle that had a couple rusty nails
in it killed a friend in a bar fight.

The fellow up the street who
looked like a young
Michael Stipe or Gene Wilder -
big puffs of cottony hair swarming
his slender face - and was involved in
high school theater one year ahead of me
held out until he was an adult to kill his wife
and leave her body out in some far flung field
in order to be with a bar maid or waitress.

The skinny blonde who always had A's
and liked to pick something out of his
eyebrows and eat it all the time, reacted
to the deaths in Bhopal by saying "Those
people lived in tents. How dare they ask
for so much cash for damages?"

And I keep thinking of my parents
hounding me, saying "Why don't you go
out and play football with those boys?"