Daily Poem July 16, 2009

This comes from deep in my past and from a land I don't remember occupying except on Sundays in March.


Pajama Roses

If you ask me
I’d say it wasn’t meanness,
it was strangeness, yes, that made him say it;
and a lot of denial.
But the little kids in the street
don’t know that.
They don’t know
how it feels to lie down in the dark—
To lie,
down in the dark
in your own dark,
in your own lie.
They’re young yet.
They haven’t had time
to figure it out,
and to forget what they’ve figured.
For instance, when Owen told them,
I haven’t found a single rose
the color of pajamas, I mean,
I knew he was lying but
wasn’t sure what he was trying to hide,
the roses or the pajamas—
the bruise of wishes on his eyes.