Every time the phone rings
I think I’m in trouble.
I’m in the stolen Honda again.
I’m out in the park scratching
my name into the picnic table with a pocket knife
while my classmates get their diplomas.
I’m falling backwards through the fog,
pulled into it chin over finger
over ribs over tongue, pried from the door jamb,
dragged through the living room
and the kitchen into the boulevard of trouble.
It’s my mother calling. It’s the principal.
It’s the cops shining their heavy
flashlights through the windows of my mistakes.
I want to say that I never run,
that when trouble finds me I reach for the phone
like a man who wants to stare his behavior
in the face. I pull on my goggles
and climb on my army green Triumph
and accelerate into that cloud of spears and torches
on the horizon, the dust covering my lips
and filling my hair, the wind roaring over my knuckles.
From: https://aprweb.org/poems/trouble-poem
Date: 2015
By: Jay Nebel (1974- )
From Troubles of The World 
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