Song J (for all)

Here is the incoming disorder,

brace discriminate, those who lived
and left when various fathers moved on --
those (the various one or two)
that culled the best cricks
and trees (w/ undergrowth,
that is, further east of Wissahickon,
be they a class of their own
such where I slunk
from my rough stoop
there, where mother cried
her eyes out for the whole
neighborhood to see from
behind dirty blinds

now ask me what keeps me here
I was so young my first memory
was of fingering
a crack of white sand
in the corner of a garage door
few blocks down where S,
now a doctoral student of sorts,
lived, in both his houses, one
his grandmother's,
where aloe grew

now ask me what keeps him here
I was so young my first
memory was of K
running through shaded Ellis
to the rec and tripped and split
open his knee on a pothole
(later his new bike stolen)

from Ba Le, I caught him with the ring
already on the finger of a forgettable
girl who was too busy on her phone
to properly greet, well, then,
I thought, I've better
places to be in the spring

Polis, once again,
is bliss which is base
I bubble violently when dropped
in and ceased when I came
to realize, (mid-scrub) O
how that territorial flag
you've stabbed into yrself,
looks goddamned silly