aprioriangelo

Luciernagos
by me

There was a time when we weren't afraid to die
or take an electric dive from a live wire rope swing
into the freezing liquid summer of the quarry lagoon,
firefly nights barricaded by blue slate waterfalls a thousand
feet high, skipping like a stone
faster than the speed of sound
to the floor of the ice-flecked cove
where no hero would ever drown,
carved by heart from boyhood bravery and the
bloody knuckles of a left hook
to an old oak tree, an explosion of Junebugs
with gasoline-painted shells
louder than the sound of speed
and faster than we thought we'd need
to soar in a stolen Chevrolet over Mexico
with the dawn as our headlights,
to get away from the war outside
that would surely someday scuff our young bones to dust and
steam instead of streamlined courage
and mistrust in what our fathers had in store for us
behind the locked doors of old cement
hearts and condescending eyes
that take Polaroids that can never be torn,
never be burned or passed as boring even after
boyhood bravery is forgotten and absorbed
by the dryer times, when old friends and waterfalls
will be wiped from the skin, artificial hearts and conversation-
starved stomachs stay awake to gossip
about Saturday nights, about slowly spinning the genies
out of the bottles in wide arcs like upside
down smiles, slow, with all the adrenaline
sapped out, slow, as if the paralysis were already settling in.