Eighteen Moves to Checkmate As a new kid Untethered to one town I followed my father's life Construction of dams and roads That ran across Kansas I-70, Ellis to Leavenworth Took eight years, and With each move I would evaporate as smoke does Like I was never there So why make friends Just to leave them All that time and energy To cry goodbye Isolated A Russian novelist Self-caged in a small upper room With a writer's fear To fill eight-hundred blank pages Yet wolves know the smell Of prey's blood And I cannot find enough wine To clear my invisible ledger That holds little profit Of friendships Adding the compound interest Of villains like in Dickens’s novels Tacked to memory Unable to erase their derisions That began at their city limits
Who made newcomers feel Like a Peanuts character Alone in the outfield Worried by their words And often Goliaths fought my David Never knowing Like they did What was fair What was right Asking where the good kids hid Wondering why they could not find me From the first or second moment There among the rat bastards Who stole their fathers' cigarettes Drank their mothers' liqueur And me Feeling homesick For someone gentle 25 May 2016