Halvard Johnson wrote:
> Reminds me of the time in Fell's Point in Baltimore I was walking along S.
> B'way toward the harbor and was passed by two guys
> going the other way, one of whom said, in an astonished tone,
> to the other, "Him? Who'd want to kill him?"
>
> Hal
>
Yeah, but.
MUGGER
In the April paradise of 1956,
in the Bronx Botanical Gardens,
there an older boy held a fishknife
to my throat, wrested the camera
I carried and the jacket I wore,
and left me quivering, brought to ground.
Now, on those nights
when all life's mischances
weave themselves into the fleshy brocade
of a drape that darkens and smothers,
heats and dresses the heart
in a curtain of sweltering memories,
it is then that my tormentor looms
before me, looms but does not float,
plants himself like a termite
in the foundations of my house:
and he is solid,
reeking like the earth and leaves
that filled my mouth and nostrils
that day so long ago,
and he plies his recollected trade with
the passionless tenacity of the termite,
chewing through my crumbling foundations.
KTW/6-29-95
--
Ken Wolman http://bestiaire.typepad.com http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
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"I have been watching you; you were there, unconcerned perhaps, but with a strange distraught air of someone forever expecting a great misfortune, in sunlight, in a beautiful garden."--Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelleas et Melisande
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