all you do is self-observe.

manhood

this is me playing fast and loose with pentameter and taking my hat off to harmony korine.

manhood
(for chris)
brock robinson

concrete is not a gracious bedfellow
but try telling that to your father who
would wash the world of cowardice if you
found him a hose that could stretch far enough,
blood’s no company for commiseration
not that a boy raised on cold blonde voices
shuttled through a phone line would have any place
for such a fragile thing as empathy.

does your chest still know the difference between
plastic and bone? if you won a battle
would you even know? what is victory,
besides forcing your legs to again stand
like a pair of weatherbeaten traitors?
and is that worth the foot full of glass and
the smile from a man who can only
love you through a bottle of cough syrup?

this is all the vitality the world
has left us. it’s just a simple dance. what
could be so irreparable to you? you
who have smoked your way through twenty years of
injuries, never once asked about the
baby clothes, the pictures of her that he
stuffed between bible pages, you who is sweat,
is broken teeth, but is still not yet a man.