By Joshua VanAuken
Kill a man with a word or hang him slowly with sentences.
When he spoke he grew a bearded confidence.
He was a boy with manhood dreams, because
if he could then his father’s sentence would be in a dream,
and nut tucked beneath his hairless chin, because he was yet a boy and not ready to begin.
He came into a place that wasn’t yet made,
and his mothers pierced tongue
would ring long beyond his days.
He came, with big fisted paws, yet yipped and then he nipped,
and he tried to bite like a dog.
If I knew how to play even one cord,
then my vice would lift to him.
I would kneel to the floor, because it is there that I see myself in him.
Because a fatherless boy is not ready for a tight clenched chin.
It looks heavy in his jaw, and doesn’t allow him to grin.
Even the softest breath could shake his light feathered knees.
And there he would drop and fall.
Wondering why he had a chin, and hair,
and a life at all.
The other day, this boy passed by me.
I tried to scratch his back,
as I watched him slip into a dream.
I looked into the wonder of his slanted chin
And the way he was wondering if he could ever be tucked in.
About j.james
