He Never Did.

[dadio]

Danny Cogan said
he was going to smash

your face in
after school,

but he never did,
it was just one

of his frequent threats
he dished out

to kids smaller
than himself;

You guessed
he didn’t have

the patience to wait
or maybe

he didn’t have it in him
to go through

with the threat
of punishment after all.

Then one day
he was taken off

by some weird guy
to the beach

and the cops
were searching for him

and his mother
was distraught

thinking the worse,
imaging him

dead some place,
buried in some woods

or damp ditch
or left on the beach

to be taken out
by the tide,

to the sea
and eaten by fishes,

but he wasn’t,
the guy was caught

and Danny found
sitting on the beach,

eating an ice-cream,
looking out to sea,

untouched and unharmed,
thankfully.

[joel]

He just gave up on goodness at last
as the goal of the life he'd amassed;
the old schoolyard bully
could never quite fully
make it good for the scars of his past.

So instead he'd trade goodness for grace
on the hope it might somehow replace
his self-talk of glory
with life's sweeter story,
like icecream that melts on the face.

[dadio]

thank you, Joel, for reading & your fine poem.