Not long ago, my parents gave me a copy of the issue with this in it, which they’d apparently been holding onto. This poem is now almost as old as I was when I wrote it.

Just now, I went back to read it again, because Wood’s got me thinking of taking up some poetry again (Haiku Year notwithstanding). I include this thing here at Jet Pack as an excerpt of myself, I guess. I’ve resisted the urge to revise the language or spelling.

June 17th, 1994, 10:38:09 p.m.

I was on my way home,
tapping behind 49th Ave.,
prepped for a night of sit-com
boredom and empty phones,
when, or perhaps a moment before,
a pair of grim-clad stereotypes emerged
as though they had been poured
out of a thick fluid from some economy-buy jug,
out of the cardboard, shadow, and crate walls
of one’s junior-high impressions of New York.

One clicked out a ditty
he’d been working on all morning
as the taller one demanded,
with knife in hand and his army of playground strategy,
that I “fork over some green,”
and “quick buddy.”
Actually, it was a switchblade
or more of a butterfly,
like a bayou sidearm or bucknife, bayonet.
When I say bayonet
I mean saber, katana,
six feet of wood with a spear’s head,
a pole-arm or wickedly toothed halberd.
A Tomcat or F-15 Eagle
with ICBM emplacements,
except more like an orbital defense platform
capable of smoking Chicago
and me
if I didn’t produce some bread,
which I did.