Breaking

The holy light of loneliness
shines inside a single cell
across the alley tonight,
lit up in the block-long
grid of apartments and hallways and
garage doors, a boy, sixteen,
has hung a bedspread across
the span of the single garage, and placed
a red bulb in the ceiling fixture.
Music pumps past the
enclosing walls—poured concrete,
a shape just wide
enough and long enough
to nudge a car between.
The sound of speakers crashes against
limits, grows huge and
slams the air. He rides a two-foot board
and throws himself at the side,
full-speed on metal wheels and wood,
like a wave beaten up the sea-wall,
hurling himself forward, to perfect
a mastery—a somersault in air that will return him
to earth still rolling. He breaks
his flight against the wall,
and falls and retreats, and returns. In dimensions
of nine by eighteen, in the cave of his faith,
hot and red, with strange music
for food, he tests
his soul and slams his body,
his bone-jutting fragile boy’s shoulders,
down hard on the concrete, and rising does not
weep, or even hesitate, again.