"On Summer Evenings Several Summers Before the Next War"

The good boys said if you told
the psycho to eat dirt he would.
The big boys said be brave,
bounce rocks of his skinhead,
then run. The smart boys said
the evening wasn't safe,
the psycho lurking with his lizard claws
sharpened for small boys who tell mommy.
The small boys fled. And we boys stood,
exchanging dirty looks, the sky darkening.
Then some boy always said, "So what're
yuh made of? So what'll yuh give me?"

In this way we build legends large enough
for our ambition, although we didn't know
what our ambition was beyond sensation:
watching girls who sashayed home
from Dairy Queen at five-'o-clock,
detonating frogs with cherry bombs,
spit massaging Spalding gloves.
What fathers called the hunting instinct,
what mothers called young love,
what teachers condemned

as delinquent behavior,
drove us through the neighborhood,
a rotary storm, a gang of stumbles
and troubles. We loved all destruction.
And we loved baffling the adults—did God
make room in heaven for the souls of psychos?
Why did God make psychos? What did that prove?
And we loved the psycho, who helped us prove
what we were made of: playing by the Junglegym
where we found sharp stones small enough
to bombard the kid from a safe distance,
who scared us with his unfixed eyes,
aviator's cap and green mittens.

—John Engman