to say we were lost boys would be cliché

but clichés have ways

of cementing truths into language

like hard red suns that scorched West Philly & warm beers we guzzled ‘till we couldn’t walk straight & time went missing like a thief

who stole my innocence

& we packed into an old sedan on a road to nowhere &

perhaps, if time is not linear, this had to happen &

if free will is a myth, we had no choice in the matter,

merely swigging, smoking, fighting in adolescent wastelands

I know I was lost, but what about them? they that collaborated, buying psychadelic 7-11 mushrooms but too afraid to eat ‘em

wandering empty streets, ending up at train stations

you taking my car, we unsure of how we returned home

me – back in psych wards a week later

unable to see anything but pain &

too self-absorbed to realize the sheer enormity of pointless suffering

in Darwin’s evolutionary world, before I found God & abandoned Him like a jilted lover,

to spend twenty-four months in stupor, in a dark bedroom with

cigarettes for lunch

& enough books to last centuries

I think of this God not as I thought of Him before

as supernatural pinch-hitter,

but the ground of being

cells in my aging body

light in my lover’s smile

miracle of my niece

daffodils pushing out of wet soil & rising toward light

a stubborn way of saying all Creation is unbreakable

(Photo by Benjamin Grant on Unsplash)