I was not really "thinking" when I wrote my poem. Something I read triggered a memory and I wrote the details down and then began the long process of editing, arranging details into a narrative form, making the thing as seamless as I could..

Born in North Berkshire County, Massachusetts. Year of hurricane Edna. Mother and father went to Heaven before I was three. Was raised by Grandma and Gramp. Gramp was millionaire. Lost all his money to hospitals and died. I was ten: wanted to be Major League baseball player but was cut from high school team by prancing baseball coach. Went to college, graduated (Goddard College, '79). Went to work, worked. Wrote mostly prose until year or so ago when I became serious about poetry. Have lived in the central Vermont area for past 25 years.

another MANPOWER job
where they send you out
and take half your pay,
only it wasn't a bad job, this one:
mixing paints, putting

the cans into the arms
of a machine and
watching the machine jitter like it had the
shakes...
I got off at four and
started to hitch hike
but could not get a ride
and all the drivers
looked smug, like bastards, laughing at me, and I thought
"fuck you assholes,
I will walk,"
and I started to walk
my back to the traffic
cars going past at
sixty, the bastards!
I was pissed: even if
a car stopped I would
not get in.
I marched like one of
Caesar's soldiers going

to meet the Gauls,
sweating out my ass,
it was hot, hazy, no
breeze; people moved
out of my way, I must not have looked normal.
I wasn't normal.
I was pissed.
I walked twelve miles
back to the place.
A girl who lived in
the apartment asked
how I got back and I
said: "I walked."
She had a Mid-Eastern
look and was screwing
a black guy from Detroit who smoked pot and did
not talk.
Me, I wasn't screwing anyone
except myself.