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enjoy this Kenneth DiMaggio writing in the free cc&d Tax Day 2011 PDF file chapbook Poems and Stories from The Blue Collar Book of the Dead				You can also order this as a 2011 6" x 9" perfect-bound paperback ISBN# book! Click on the cover spread for the book Poems and Stories from The Blue Collar Book of the Dead

Converse

Kenneth DiMaggio

Three months to live
from the way you stepped on
exploding firecrackers or ran over
church window stained glass that
you just broke—

—there was just little rubber
and canvas left to the ankle high
sneakers that started out
toothpaste white shiny
and tightly stitched cardboard
stiff canvas black

But within such brief hoodlum heeled life
that never learned how to hide
from beneath Levis that were widely
cuffed up

—you leaped down flights
of junior high stairway
after pulling fire alarms
during anti-drug school assemblies

and also Kodak a dangerous
delinquent style with one foot
toe heeled up across the arch
of the other

while the rest of your lithe
adolescent menace

arched back against the door
of the chrome rimmed phone booth just
daring the world to call 911
while you squint-eyed it with
an unfiltered Camel cigarette
dangling from your mouth
—oh but it was not all pose
because

Three months for the shoes
meant to be worn
on the basketball court
that was never for you
lacking coordination
—but not a varsity quick
athletic sense of delinquency
and vandalism

And would this be the summer
to tattoo you with a bad reputation

no different that what you ask
and hope for yourself
before you write today:
“Will this be the poem?”

—and if it is not
at least let it have
a little snarl
and let all of them
be honest

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