(in)famous people

If every success-
ful person was tortured young-
should they be great-full ?




Image of painting by Christian Krohg [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Lesson 1: Nature and the Soupman

Travel back to your first lesson
taught by Mother Nature.
When you learned
your parents were not the only
nor the best
teachers
about life.

We went camping,
my parents, their friends, Hercules-the dog.
We'd go to the Russian River
where there were no campsites-
you sight your spot and camp-
if you like.

They would drink and fish,
and drink like fish,
and more-it was the eighties.
Their friend, 

a man called Kevin Soupman
was fishing near me
when he caught a rainbow
trout.

He held it across both his hands,
it was shiny, slimy and squirmy-

the things kids like.
Moments later,
he said he had something for me.
He told me to hold out the palm
of my hand.
I did, eagerly.

In it,
he placed a crimson pebble.
It rolled a moment
as I tried to see it more closely
then it settled in the evening sun-
(un)still

throbbing and beating its inner drum.
Thus,

Nature and the Soupman
taught me
all I needed to know
about heartlessness.


Image By Ken Hammond / USDACornischong at lb.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons.

The lessons taut

“Surfing with Jesus”

the sign read

in front of the Pilgrim Church

across from the high school.

Not the Mormon one

across the parking lot

on the other street
with the lemonade stand

and portable orange bibles

towering high.

A teenage boy with earbuds

sits at the bus stop

smoking and snarling

waiting insecurely

to be picked up

or to be saved.

The bell has not yet rung.

Image By Hogyn Lleol at English Wikipedia (Self made by Hogyn Lleol) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Published in the 2017 Magee Park Poets Anthology.