Freedom on the Grid

 Now you find the kids sitting on their rooftops,

basking in the sun, banging on the pipes,

and kicking in the vents and gutters, all fetching

stray balls they tossed too high in mid game

between the broken bricks in the chimneys—

poking their heads off the gables like

little rocks from a shallow wavy sea and resting

in pieces from sight on the shingles.

Below them a spider web of telephone cables

and electro-wires feed the notochords of their

bungalows and crisscross the blue sky with

the clotheslines all off the wheels—

And they’re in fear of motion there—

in fear of the warm wind rocking the wires

and dreading the day when the fences will be lifted

and into that sprawl they’ll spring.

They’re pressed up on the screen doors shut

to barrels behind the concrete walls of ferns

and sitting on the hill grass by the highway—

They’re climbing up the chains in the yard

and on the run from the cinder-blocks

and gasoline at Old Rust gone up in flames

withthe mud and trash and grass clippings

and stains on their sneakers.

And everywhere kids running full force—

the weight of their bodies thrown on every step—

Out to the gaps in the pockets of the grid—

Out to the trees and poison ivy of the tangled

Arcadian swamps—Out to the underworld

of overpasses and embankments for shade—

Out to the grass and wildflower knolls of

dandelions and anthills in the cloverleaf—

To the power lines!—that endless march of metal

across these badlands—to the cool

basement of some flat out in the jungle

and the crawlspace between the tool shed

and the links and below the old oak tree where

believers see only the rundown playgrounds

waiting for greater things—with their cracked

plastic slides and tangled swings.

Out anywhere else in that out-world outback

before treading back home to the cement below

the stairs where the sun shines through

in strips and peeks out from the prison to

the adult world of sun unbound on the

porches above—terrified by the thought of

twilight—by the end times of ripped knees

torn in play beneath the trees.

They go where there’s snacks and candy,

just a half hour walk down the way past

Rex Drive if only to spend a few hours a day

and get some cool AC and 20 oz. slushies—

To come home with those sugar rushies

because there’s not much else to do around here

but hang out at gas stations with a pop and a pack

for some fun and a bag full of sweets.

They go where there’s shade, where there’s

energy even in the dog days—they go

where there’s iron high-tension lines like Eiffel

or Krupp boys to carry their currents along—

And when their energy’s been drained

and summer’s sun is sinking lower than the bricks

piled on the hillside line of triple-deckers

and garden walls on the other side—

And shadows make even the shortest feel

the weight of being tall—the kids go

sitting out on lazy rooftops—You see them there

perched high in the afternoon orange

trying to conquer the shade by drugging

down the sun made prophet of the dim—

standing above the crumbling down and rusting up

of all their parents’ other oversights:

That window fan circulating the noontime heat—

That gutter cracked and dented now

leaking acid rain to the brown lawn—

That beehive built behind the garage screens—

That crabgrass sprouting under fertile water jets—

That streetlight full blast over a pot hole—

That garden hose snaked across the greenest

sod, cutting off the sunlight—

That broken window above the compost

of fall leaves and other past glories sitting

near the garage down in the bugdom

with the glass splinters still stuck where fallen—

That busted hoe whacker by weeds—

That bent pick and shovel by rocks and roots—

Those grubs and flyers prospecting the evening

for meat and heat by the bug light.

So you see picking up those broken shards,

those asphalt bricks, those garden tools,

this generation intimidated by shadows

who live in the shade—fearful of confinement,

who crawl on bended knee and rip their jeans

through the underbelly if only to remain

hidden underground—who disturbed by patience

live out lives on leashes—

Neurotic, hyperactive, short of attention,

who get upset by and content with decay,

grow underweight, depressed, and anxious,

who act out angers with the pushers and the pushed

the demented and the drugged—

with the impatient ones who gather stones

and the lazy ones who topple them down.

There’s a few alive in every town.

NEXT

--Poems from the Sprawl