mmmmMagic
kkkk
xxxxx
ththth
A childhood stutter and stammer slurred my speech.
In the 1950s
My mouth rebelled against the passage of th and gh.
Family and friends failed to decipher my words.
My tongue mangled consonants vowels in my mouth.
Adults thought me stupid.
Schoolmates thought the same.
I was beaten by three of them.
I came to understand everyone is stupid
And I could never changed that.

My father took me to doctors in Maine
“His tongue is too big for his mouth. Slicing his palate with razors will force his tongue to work more.”
My father rejected their cure.
“My son will live with a lisp.”
Thereafter I spoke my own language
My words belonging to me alone.

Our family moved from Falmouth Foresides
To the South Shore of Boston
My mother put us in Catholic school.
I tried to hide my speech
The nuns would gave none of that.
The ruler on my wrist for a sloppy th.
The ruler on my wrist for gh.
Slap slap slap.
My classmates happy to be spared the rod
The more severe nuns believed I Satan-spawned.
Lefthanded
Slap slap slap.

Sister Mary Osmond understood my flaws.
She scheduled speech therapy.
None of their efforts helped
The bullies more relentless than those in Maine
Strangely my speech in Latin was perfect m
Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa.
I was always surprised the priests understood me.

1966
Ruby Tuesday
The Rolling Stones.
I believed in neither God or Satan.
I was a teenager
We sought to live forever young.
Through books, music, the world.
None of us had to speak in the 60s or 70s
Singer and poets hid us from th and gh
We heard other words
We smelled the history of ancient scents.
Strawberries tasted different
Incense in the air.
Flesh smooth as shaved peaches.

1971
Before the Sierra Nevadas
A city below
Reno
A haiku
Sort of.

1976
Years later
A stolen car
The decrepit West Side Highway
New York City
The stammer, stutter, lips
Still his.
A woman waiting
In love with his poetry
Maybe him

And everything became more
Not magic
But only the being here more than the Now.
The spoken stood once
In my way
But the reading of poems.
Poems
Whose power has not been lost in the modern age
But not for a boy with a thick tongue
And a heavy Boston accent.