Innocence

When I was
six or seven
my friend
said "fuck",
but I had no idea
what it meant.
He told me
it was a bad word
and wouldn't tell me
what it meant
until we
got away from
my little brother,
and went to a hill
in a far corner
of his father's
cow pasture.
Then he told me
that it meant
two people kissing
when they weren't
married.


-Jim DuBois
June 23, 2012

Insomniac Math

Let's see...
I couldn't fall asleep right away
so it was maybe 430 or 5
then there were those weird dreams that kept waking me up
plus those fing dogs barking in the morning
and now what the fuck was that?
I think mom or dad just came into the extra room I'm staying in
probably to get something she or he forgot
but possibly just to accidentally wake me

now it's 1146
so it adds up to probably 6 1/2 restless hours
if I was lucky
but it's more likely to equal
that I'm tired and irritated
and the day is screwed.

Sounds like my brother and nephew are here now though
and at least I'll get to eat a lot
plus I got more sleep than the 3 hours I kept fearing
so I'm probably not screwed as hard as I thought.


-Jim DuBois
Nov 25, 2010

It Rained So Hard

I'm staring
at this swamp
and remembering that time
when we were young
and it rained so hard
a pond formed
next to the junkyard
and we built a raft
from old tires
and the hood of a truck
and floated around
in the rain.


-Jim DuBois
April 12, 2010

Stars, and Ice

Walking back through the front field at night,
after feeding the cats at the barn,
we used to lay down and stare up at the stars
and feel the enormousness of their distance
and what it would be like
to just keep falling
up into the sky.

Sometimes when we came back that way
in the winter,
the whole hill would be covered
with ice-encrusted snow
and we used to lay down on our bellies
and slide slowly
all the way down.


Jim DuBois
Jan 1, 2010

The green champagne bottle

The green champagne bottle
on the side of the road
reminded me of being young.

We used to play in the old junkyards
behind the barn,
collecting the pretty blue bottles,
the miniature bottles,
and the large rusty cans
and scraps of metal
which we couldn’t determine
a past identity for.

We stocked a boulder fortress
on the frontier of our exploration
with such goods,
and wondered how people could have
thrown them out in the first place,
since they were still interesting
and useful.


-Jim DuBois
Nov 3, 2003

This is the Coat (March 31, 2007)

This
is the coat

This is the coat

This is the coat
I wore when you were born

This is the coat
my brother gave me

This is the coat
I wore every day this week


-Jim DuBois