I see them:
alive and electric like the air,
pinwheel boys revolving,
perched on flimsy plastic sticks,
crushed into the midway dust by clowns
and fools and cliques alongside tacky
blood-striped cones.
A broken echo, silenced sob,
and they lose the light they own;
they fade, unplugged, descending
like the coffin to the tomb.
I see them:
poking fists through air,
they float above the crowd,
lifted by design, to lose
the thrill of flight they’ve found.
The salty crackle on the tongue,
the thirsty watch the girls, their eyes
are young, their aim is off, to throw the dart
to pop the dream, to win the prize;
he’s making speeches about things
he doesn’t get, claims the mic
and holds the hostage, wins the bet,
the posturing back-alley bully boys
whip the towel into a noose,
dropping threats like cherry bombs,
like never-men who never lose.
I see them:
lonely ones who hold back tears
so long they cannot cry, weeping ones
who only ever weep, gentle ones
who lie, lovers who kiss back the tears and hold them
close beneath the stands,
rejects trembling at a lead-clad look,
hopefuls who have lived so little of what they read
about in books, boys wheeled here in wagons,
eyes wide at a world of flame,
and sound and color, wearied by the same
and sugared up and wailing, boys who dream
and boys who wake, boys who scream and who can’t take
it anymore, who throw rocks and bottles
and bullets, and boys who lift glassy shields
and lower masks, and boys who scatter words
like bottle glass, who run the shards along their arms
to prove they bleed boy-blood, red
as the flag-stripe, the apple peel,
the battered head, the lashed back,
the balloon unwillingly released,
vanishing into the east.
Do you see them?
Dying boys
reaching
for life,
tender as tinder in the fire,
flickering out like sparks
above the pyre.