poem of the day 08.21.14

the incredible loneliness of west virginia

at times it was true

i felt alone in that housing plan in west virginia

fresh from a concrete yard full of kids

in the great city of pittsburgh

it didn’t bother me as much

as maybe it did my parents

there were no kids my age on the street

most of the people in the plan

had been there for several years

they were coal mining democrats

with plastic on their furniture

and reagan/bush 1980 bumper stickers

still fresh on the back of their cars

i was alone but rarely ever lonely

there was one kid, ronnie

he was twelve to my seven

but i hung around him anyway

because the two of us

were out of options during the summer

ronnie liked bb guns and atari

i liked his baseball card collection

when the boredom was too much

we’d sit in ronnie’s living room

he played video games

while i looked through his card collection

when i found a pittsburgh pirate card

i’d drop it from the pile and hide it under my thigh

then get them into my pocket

when ronnie got up for pepsi or to piss

in my bedroom i had pirate cards galore

i’d use the cards to draw the players

and then hang them all over my walls

until my west virginia bedroom

was a sea of black and gold

they reminded me of everything

that i was missing back home

when the fall came

ronnie had school friends again

but i still hadn’t made any

i went by his house to look at baseball cards

but ronnie and his friends were sometimes on the lawn

holding their bb guns up

looking for low flying birds or rabid bats

or they were playing football on the street

ronnie said that he didn’t have time

he said he’d run out of pirates cards

and then all of the other boys would laugh

they’d go back to throwing the pigskin around

or searching the sky for an animals to pelt

while i walked back home

against the fading sunlight

of the wild and wonderful landscape.