for Bob C.

My father was an airborne Aquarian,

my mother, a napalming Aries.

Together they made a firestorm,

and me they made an isotope,

a heavy water experiment.

 

This is neither science nor superstitious belief,

but a metaphor of my existence.

 

As a water driven Scorpio the hardest thing I'll ever do

is overcome my sense of wrath,

or refrain from drowning those who drift beneath my wake.

 

My parents bickered over money,

and wrestled conscience over what to do with me.

I remember when I was five, accused of eating like a pig,

my father called the circus and told them to come and get me.

 

"What's the matter, can't take a joke?" he asked.

I took it, but in my dreams they came in wagons,

midget cars and riding elephants.

They dragged me shrieking in the night.

Clown striped and bare-chests, smoking their cigars,

they bound and gagged me and threw me in a poke.

 

I spoke to dad when spoken to,

was seen, but seldom heard.

I got to know my circus friends and

preferred them ever since.

 

My mother went to business school,

taught me how to type and write.

The blazing keys I pound are branded on my finger tips.

She let me have a doll when I was nine,

but all his clothes were hers,

nineteen thirties hand-me-downs.

She finally said she wished that I had been a girl.

 

It was all my fault my parents argued.

They told me so everyday.

And I was just as much a mystery

to myself as I was to them.

 

I drowned them out with music if I could

and borrowed money for a saxophone

to blow them all away.

 

My father yelled at me for taking drugs I never took,

and knocking up girls I didn't even know.

One minute I was queer, the next, a cavalier,

he couldn't decide which.

I stole, I lied, I smoked too many cigarettes.

 

The list of imaginary crimes could fill the cosmic blotter.

My life was safer when I kept to the streets.

 

I worked my way through high school

delivering newspapers

and usually fell asleep on top of all my school books.

Six years later my parents agreed

to end the gruesome paper route

and let me concentrate on school,

but rescue came too late.

In study hall, another place to snooze,

I dreamed of magic bubbles that could travel to the stars.

My teacher said, ...now wouldn't it be cool

if I wrote it all down, so

She met me at a coffeehouse where I could read.

I played the saxophone there and blew them all away.

Devoted to a life of fantasy

I learned to survive the arguments.

I climbed inside my bubble, left the earth

sane at last and so much lighter,  going

as far as a boy could possibly go,

setting foot on purple, alien worlds

where my music never stopped.



Who knew you could do that

with plain paper and a typewriter?