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 cookie jarness
That pushing too farness
Collecting comic charminess 
Pulling pigtales
Stolen kisses
Hidden playboy kinda business
Cop a feel inquisitiveness

Being a bit
Self conscience ...

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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 13,
getting interested in girls.
When CF took you from me,
my heart, like a flag, unfurled.

You fought CF with every breath.
For 13...

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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 sheep,
But he wanted to see before he went to sleep.
Shepherds said that angels sent them to the stable,
So he wanted...

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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 shells
senses awakened by strong, briny smells
warming, the zephyr was gentle enough -
yawning in promise, the sun winked at me.

descending a...

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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 I thought to myself, she loves him, she does,
This Beautiful Brown Eyed Boy.
He stopped when he got to the corner...

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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 again.
Smell my seared wool going down the drain.
Ba, ba, blackishly wishing I was right as rain.

Words accessed by my fingertips
help...

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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 none of his friends can tell
that he's been evicted as some had predicted
Biding his time, twiddling his thumbs in a...

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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 think that I could stare at him for days, 
imagining at least a hundred ways
to make him finally aware of...

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

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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 this teenage boy,
Build me up this way
No bigger than a toy?

No bigger than his dog
In fact, we saw eye to...

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After my young wife died tragically, I decided to move away
Memories we made in our house were painful; I couldn’t stay
I’d often remember that phone call from her doctor who’d said
"John, you need to get here quickly" but I knew she was dead.

I moved to...

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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 worthless as ignorance:  nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness.  Pain comes from the darkness.
And we call...

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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 girl and tapes their polaroids to every surface

he is every music video you've memorized
always humming something sweet
he lights all her...

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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 bright
The happiness you’re bringing
Chases away the night

The sun is burning bright
And though the nightmare lingers
Chases away the night
With friendly fiery...

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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 I can't reach.
There are times when it quells,
When my voice cracks,
And I am somewhere else.

Where my hair is to my...

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