That was when
the young priest
opened the parish gym
on week nights
to keep us off the streets,
cornered us one by one
demanding to know how many times
since our last confession
we spilled our holy seed,
promised us paradise
if we kept our fists
out of our pants.
And when
girls like Rosemary
from the convent school
poked against us
in the wild, windy midnights,
their mothers in ragged gowns
hissing through cracks
in screen doors,
girls like Rosemary
who panted until their skin shook,
then stepped back
because the good sisters implored them
not to step down,
sent us home feverish
to wait for something better.
And when
police stalked us
through glaring, dangerous streets
because we happened to be there,
mexican, black,
youngest in a family of ten.
We searched alleys and trash bins
looking for booze or fistfights,
something to steal or break,
running from the young priest
who wanted us to wrestle or box
or play basketball,
tell him how many times that week
we hungered for girls like Rosemary
with scented hair and the warm place
we could feel through their skirts.
When the red eyes of patrol cars
turned a corner suddenly,
we hid under old chevys,
ripped our shirts and our skin
rolling over fences
to escape being slammed
against paddy wagons,
to escape being beaten into better boys,
willing and ready to sacrifice.
And when
the ex football player, the ex marine,
the newborn Christian
campaigning for city council,
came to our school
to tell us of the vision he had for our future
and explain how he once felt as we did,
felt he knew everything
but now he knew better,
knew we could create a better world
and be like our forefathers,
the founders of the Republic,
the great generals, the great frontiersmen,
who believed in God, hard work and gold,
if we’d only listen and obey
and sacrifice.
And just beyond those days
we woke one morning
to see the dream of our future
brighten under a banner headline
in the photograph of the rumpled carcass
of a helicopter gunship
smoking human flesh
in a place we never heard of
along the muddy road to Hue.