the death of an idiot he spoke to mice and sparrows and his hair was white at the age of sixteen his father beat him every day and his mother lit candles in the church he seemed to be constantly masturbating in such odd places as behind the garage or up in the apricot tree his grandmother came while the boy slept and prayed for the devil to let loose his hold upon him while his mother listened and cried over the bible the young girls he didn t seem to notice the games boys played he didn t seem to notice there wasn t much he seemed to notice he just didn t seem interested he had a very large and ugly mouth and the teeth bent out and his eyes were small and lusterless his shoulders were slump and his back was bent like an old man he lived in our neighborhood we talked about him a bit when we got bored and then went on to more interesting things he seldom left his house we would ve liked to beat him but his father who was a huge and terrible man beat him for us one day the boy died at seventeen he was still a boy a death in a small neighborhood is noted with alacrity and forgotten three or four days later but the death of this boy seemed to stay with us all we kept talking about in our boy man s voices at 6 00 p m just before dark just before dinner and whenever i drive through that neighborhood now decades later i think of his death while having forgotten all the other death or anything else that had happened then as i say can t all be sex can it 
['beat poetry']