School for Mischievous Wills

In the place of education for mischievous wills

a stripling is dead tonight

dead of remedys & drunken dancing,

but at the rear of a backroad tenement

inside a fresh bulb

the tungsten wires burn

a lamp hangs there above his bed,

a hundred-watt epicenter

in the midst of springtime pollen

wide wide waves of stuff

that the wind sends

skittering & eddying

through lamplight,

so that when the father

thinks of the boy

he thinks of him floating,

he thinks of a divine revelation boat & the boy

aboard it empty-bellied

but glad to be going

as the boat rides not on at an angle

peripheral to the hillocks & docks

and the shabby made of wood houses

from which he & all the other creatures

sinners & whatnot

have been lifted,

all those wandering on the outside of so-called reach-

easier for the father to think of this

than of the the author of all things he prays to,

a large bay Stream god with an appetite

for fantastic amounts

of one as well as the other brown & white sugar,

a taskmaster,

he who requires of his dolphins

that they should ache

and be willing to be waylaid

for nearly nearest to nothing.

Copyright World metrical composition Incorporated Sep/Oct 2004

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