Yogi-boy.(bullies)(Poem)

 
YOGI-BOY 
 
   Time makes the faces disappear 
   like the flecks on water where light hit. 
   Their lives go up into the air 
      Yet we breathe it. 
 
   This schoolboy cricketer marks his crease, 
      then squints upfield 
   to where his future gathers pace 
   and all the movement in that space 
   includes the car by which he's killed, 
   and I know this, being fortunate 
   to carry beyond his time another's fate. 
 
   This is C. who had the lower bunk, 
   and, aged eleven, could honkytonk 
   the simple human belch through intervals 
   of baritone glissando, as though he had 
   assembled within the cavern of his bed 
   a choir of all the school urinals. 
 
   Or he might sit cross-legged on a chair 
   then knot his feet behind his head 
   and down a rubbery grin from there 
   like a face at a porthole. Yogi-bones 
   with his matchstick legs and big knees, 
   why was it something servile in his teens, 
   something vicious and intelligent, turned 
   the musical acrobat into minor bully, 
      derisive, snide,  ...