Writing exercise number 15

On the night you died there were no apples worth stealing
all your mother’s liquor bottles woke in their sleep,
every bed in every ward they ever put you in slipped out of its sheets.
Lights came on in the windows of a half a dozen burned down houses,
and you could hear the soft ping of a baseball bat
thumping mailboxes down a gravel road,.

The trains lowed on the crossing,
the storm sewers clotted with cats.
the trailer rusted on its axles.

You were alone when you went,
no one to catch your tossed bag of clothes
comic books, bullets and baseball cards.
no accomplice to boost you in the window,
to carry the gasoline,
to wear your jacket when the man with the gun came,
no one to ride your stolen bike

fire ate the rooftops, kicked in the windows.
A white dog licked blood from a carnival mirror
Green cubes of safety glass sank in the mud