A Little Poem for Springtime

Local Boy

            With a cropped top of hair

            and gangle legs I am still the kid

            that lanked across’t the soccer yard

            guffawing. Spitting seeds of silver spit.

            I whistle down the alley and grin you over

            for one of my little Mabinogions

            with lotsa “fucks” and “shits”

            and we huddle in all conspiratorial

            about which girls’ll give it out.

            And the winter steam becomes our breaths.

            It’s all bullshit, what I do now.

            I make up the nice-guy stuff as I go

            from phones to rooms and fucking fax machines.

            Yacking straight-john to the stiffs I know.

            Sure as shit, they’ll getchya.

            That’s a ballpoint pen, not a jackknife.

            And that little courtyard at the office park?

            That ain’t no soccer yard neether.