Alas, I have nothing to say (at least, that I can develop in the time I have to post today)... so in the absence of something deep and meaningful, I thought I'd share something poetic instead. This poem was written for a college poetry course I took, and is based on actual events from my childhood as I remembered them - some details may be skewed, but 11 years or so does tend to blur the memory a bit.
Happy Days (Phoenix, 1981)
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I loved the next-door neighbor's son when I was ten, for about a week after he taught me to shoot a basketball but before he killed somebody's grandmother with a lead pipe.
It was August, when the desert heat, vicious and heavy, pressed down on the sidewalks, drying tears on my cheeks and pool water in my hair.
I loved him more that week than Ralph Macchio, or John Schneider from the Dukes, but in truth I'd have taken Scott Baio over the neighbor boy any day.
He was seventeen, and blond, or that's how I remember him, and he let me watch him shoot hoops in front of his garage, and he smiled at me when I asked if I could play.
I was too small to shoot like he did, he said, but he spent a patient half-hour teaching me the granny throw, and he didn't yell when I missed and hit him instead.
A few weeks later he disappeared, and I overheard my mother in hushed tones talking about the Anzavino boy, and how she knew he would never come to good
when my brother said he asked him for a baggie for his pot, and how he caught the baby lizards from our backyard and tortured one to death on his father's rotisserie.
And the neighbor's son, she said, was sentenced to 49 years for killing somebody's grandmother with a lead pipe, but I would have taken Scott Baio over him any day.
den 15 apr 92 |
This poem also appears on my poetry site here - if you like it, take a look around at "Soul of a Songstress".
I was just thinking about him yesterday. Don't ask me why, I can't remember - but I was thinking about him just the same. My next door neighbor, the murderer.
Wow.
Posted by: Big Brother | December 09, 2004 at 10:08 AM