Best Boy Poems

I wish to claim
My boyness
My yesterday sillyness
Innocent shyness
My crinkled nose grininess
That hide and seekiness
Spin the bottle 
kind of geekiness 

Getting caught 
My hand in the...

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Gary, you are my little soldier boy,
who died on Veteran's Day. ('83)
My sunny, golden-haired soldier boy,
that I still miss in every way.

You had just turned...

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Playing at night on rocky ground, he sprained his foot.
He hobbled onwards careful where his foot he put.
The lonely shepherds had long returned to their...

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one day as a boy, I went down to the sea
clambered o'er rocks way out to the bluff
stopping to search in a tide pool for...

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He was skipping along, swinging his arms and laughing
At what I don't know.
His grandmother, lagging a few steps behind, was laughing at him I suppose.
And...

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Watery eyed thoughts came,
Zap! Pow!  a short circuited brain.
Inward turned burned ocular pain,
too many thoughts to restrain 
I’m a cheap sheep making my mistakes...

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Poor Little Boy Lost plays a game of peekaboo
Pretending everything in his world is well
Spoiled was his plan for organizing a coup
and now he hopes...

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His eyes, like cornflowers, are pretty blue.
From where I sit in back of class, I gaze
at his soft lips – two petals sweet with dew.
I...

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He toddles toward the pebbles, tumbling the smooth stones over
in his four year old palms, rubbing them like Aladdin’s lamp, tossing
them back into the mix,...

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Oh Avi, Avi
  Sometimes, with my eyes closed
    I see you dance
      A dervish, whirling, like...

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He scooped and he packed
He rolled me good and round,
When all was done, I stood there
Only three feet off the ground

I had wondered why...
Why did...

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A quote from "90 North" by Randall Jarrell:
"I see at last that all the knowledge
I wrung from darkness -- that the darkness flung me --
is...

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she is everything you have seen in the movies
crayola hair
velvet dress
sugar in her veins
tears glued to her face
she fingerpaints the kitchen walls like a little...

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This song, it is for you
Because my heart is singing
All that I feel is true
The happiness you’re bringing

Because my heart is singing
The sun is burning...

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I am a girl,
Everyone sees it.

I graciously accept the label,
Twirling in a girls spool,
And playing it up for others.

Sometimes I feel an itch,
In a place...

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