The Last Memory of Boy

Small box in his room.
He put in Man-at-Arms,
Monglor, Voltron,
the Speak-N-Spell after
playing hangman.

There was a book,
‘Interstellar Pig’,
and a tape recorder,
tapes with scotch tape
on the dub-slots.
Johnny and Lightning car,
violet, with three wheels
still on, and
the windshield.

Dad had left years ago,
and sometimes he saw him:
custody was moved,
see-saw fashion, up
the coast, down,
the hills,
back, forth,
and she had the boy a time
again, but was
boy-ineffective and
not like him.
So she cried.  The hot phone.
Red ear to his father.

He put subtraction
homework in the box,
a red sock, a light switch
he hoped one day would
activate a cold robot.

The door opened.
The teary, sad mother.
“I’ve had enough of this,”
she said, sitting on the bed,
holding the little left
boy-hand,
“So you have to choose.
Who do you want to live with?”

There was Starscream,
of course, the best one he had,
and he could transform it
quickly, logically, back, forth.
He set it inside and closed
the boxflaps, on one of which
was printed, in his awkward
boy handwriting,
“Mine.”

His mother looked at the box,
curious, and then she went
somber.  Her hand felt cold.

“Oh.” she said.

Concerto for Paper and Pen
          

Carry and be carried,
both ugly and pretty kinds of it,
bend and be brought,
love and be loved.

True wood unless it snaps
in hard hands, serve labor
its emotion; work and wick
lights between.

For the crazes of a circle life,
fuse life, for avalanching miseries
sat aside and survived,
carry and be carried.

Else prevention maintains one,
else denials and darings,
else the fondly made sayings go
onto the deaf and wistless,
suffer and be suffered.

Trait good memories
considering and treatment,
some sharp cup of enamel,
and at the porous slab
over which they walk,
at the point of having them,
carry and be carried.