Blue

 “Blue”

I’ll call him blue

Found him in between the pages

He was new to my school

This is where the “watching out”

And “looking after” began

I was new to this

I was a shadow that clung to

Those high school walls

Those lockers with combinations

That frightened me

Always forgetting daily

The combinations

He looked in my direction 

He probably said hello

He was new around here

He didn’t have the built up hate for me

Like the majority of the rancid ass holes

I was at the end of my leash I suppose

Had to be junior year

My first car and second job had given me some distance

An old friend gave me the heads up 

Of Blue’s arrival

“Kids a good kid, a little strange”

“Watch out for him”

The irony that I was also a good kid, a little strange wasn’t lost on me

I was a little lost myself

All the unrequited crushes 

All the dumb mistakes and

Man if there was a chance of me making one

I was gonna do it on the grandest scale

Blue didn’t notice

He would pop in and out from time to time

I was closer friends with three fellas who sat with me at the study hall table

We made up games and talked shop

Shop was professional wrestling

I guess that didn’t leave me much room for me ever being in the cool crowd

At lunch I shared a table with 

The unmentionables, outcasts

Black sheep

One kid T woke up at the crack of dawn to work on a farm

His neck perpetually stained

Brown by the sun

As hard as life was inside those school walls

He saw freedom in a paycheck earned with his own hands

He was a good kid, a little strange