We were dancing on buzzsaws –
our bare feet on blacktop –
heat so bad, the tar fierce
Chasing us across the parking lot
from our bikes to the 7-Eleven, long before
"no shirt, no shoes, no service"
Naked backs, skin the hides of sun fawn –
tanned and stretched
from chlorine swimming pools
Into the blue,
Into the blue of it, the blue freeze
of the store's air conditioning
Then swirling in a red, white, and
blue cup, the sweet blue, blue
brain freeze
Like ice crystals
of jet contrails in our mouths,
frozen altitudes of the jet stream
Then riding on
to watch the planes land
at Buckley field
Where the US army
kept all the country’s nerve gas
in red, white, and blue tanks
Deep below the tumbleweeds
and gophers,
and we would
Twist and shout in pretend agony –
show the younger kids
how to die
For Desperate Poets
qbit 
Wow, qbit… this is just excellent 👌
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Thank you so much!!
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Would you mind if I share it as a reblog at some point? If not, that’s okay! No pressure 😊
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Oh for sure! Reblog away!
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and the bikes were wide-tired Schwinns w/ chainbrakes instead of handlebar brakes, and you could just hop off, leave them on the pedestrian pavement without padlocks & go inside for the treats without having to worry about anyone stealing them. Dem wuz da days.
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Oh yeah baby!!
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This is brilliant, Randall! One of your best. You do really well with these kind of poems (and other kinds); but I mean the ones where you mine some of your memory and allow your wild imagination to do its thing.
BTW, I did a TDY at Buckley ANGB the year of the great Denver Christmas blizzard — when travelers were grounded for days at the old Denver Airport (Stapleton?). The really nasty stuff was kept on the site of the present-day Denver Airport.
ABTW, mine wasn’t a Schwinn. It was a Sears Spider bike with a — for reasons known only to the hierarchy of Sears — tiger-striped banana seat. Same gold finish because I believe it was built in the same plant. Much more affordable for a poor boy like me.
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Thank you so much! Yes, Stapleton, which was also way, way close to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal where they kept the nerve gas. I think there was a kerfuffle in the early 70’s that they couldn’t extend the runway, because, well, “that might not be such a good idea” with lots of discussions of how hard a jet would have to crash on takeoff or landing in order to release giant clouds of sarin or mustard gas and wipe out Denver. Sears – yeah, I don’t think I wore even one item of clothing growing up that didn’t come from Sears. Probably most of the stuff in our house too!
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This was my summers in Winter Haven FL at age 13-14, in that ranch style house in the development carved out of an orange grove where my jilted mother and siblings lived. Pool out back, innumerable splashes all summer, trudging up to the 7-11 for Icees and that hammer of brain freeze at the end of a hot summer day. Tooling about on my Schwinn Stingray. Now it’s too hot for any of that. Great stirrings of the memory pot here.
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Thanks! And don’t forget that staple of everyone’s summers – sarin gas, LOL! OK, fine, that was sort of a niche East Denver thing.
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This is so interesting and I see from the comments how parts of it resonate with many. But the nerve gas containers- you’ve shifted the poem from bike rides to horror so well.
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You managed to resurrect, in one of your finest ever poems, tons of memories. Coming of age in the late 40s/early 50s, living in a small town, stranger-danger unheard of .. we rode our bikes to either of two places in town for those icy drinks and teeth rotting candy. (no gas.) Ah … Midwest in deep summer. Cheers, Q!
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Thank you so, so much!
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grew up across the golf course from a cemetery. we’d engage in dirt clod wars from the pile out back of the mausoleum corner of the graveyard. good throwin’!
piercing (imagined) memory you wring from the last verse. kids weren’t / aren’t really as innocent as we imagine, were we?
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Nope.
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