MUTANT HEROES

 MUTANT HEROES

It can't be a comic situation, radiance spurting energized under the skin;
it must be perturbing or itchy, like poison ivy blisters or uncontrollable acne,
but some kids are familiar with this problem.  They over-expose the
                yearbook's film.
out-dazzling flashbulbs.  Weekends, they light up the visitor's scoreboard,
                but not to make trouble.

They're not alone.  Other kids know if they dissolve solids at the worst times,
                it's not a surprise;
it's as if, for instance, a locker room's cinderblock walls were instant
                powdered drink mixture.

These aren't under control, are secrets.  And how they were taught to relax,
                they forget;
they never get dates.  Because a life's unsure when fingers sprout branches,
                or what a brain suggests
in a not pleasant voice is gas on fires already simmering and subcutaneous.
And when their eyes, shameful to them though autonomous, concentrate to
                atomize,
after midnight, their parents' bedroom door (so vision supersedes any need
                for ears)
they'll botch it more if they phone, confessing or laughing, the good-looking
                regular ones.

Such conditions don't merit headlines, interviews, don't receive TV's close-up
                devotions,
in fact, aren't claimed to exist, except in muscle-bound fantastic comics
                parents trash.
So how could you know that, in unnatural August twilight, at grown-ups'
                backyard barbecues,
one boy teenager's aware his epidermis stretches, fibrous, leaves-out, as
                steaks char?
He's dynamic as an oak, but mobile.  He towers over suburbs, looking for
                villains to handle.

Another glows and senses he gives off infinitesimal lightning.  He's
                enigmatic, shining,
his hair's electrically curled.  What combustions, deep as tissue, are stoked
                to save this boy's world!
Meanwhile his uncle (oblivious) flips magazine pages portraying
                all-important people.

Another, his sister, sees (and is stunned, wishes to hide) white, too white,
                father's boxers
x-rayed and minutely as she sees mechanisms in every clock, in every
                classroom;
they're shocking as teacher's hands in see-through pockets.   And at
                dances, boys' hands fidget in pockets.
She's hopeless, she's certain.  From porch to lawn chair to TV room her eyes
                are too strong.

Listen, it's not that they lack auditoriums, courses, programs to show them
                distinctions.
It's not that they have no teachers to lay down rules, for example what's good
                or evil.
The bad ones already are too big, the movies are moving much too fast. 
                Classmates cringe or giggle;
jocks, bullies, cool blond class presidents, cheerleaders know what to avoid,
                resent.
It's not comic.  Transmogrified life's not for school, should only be penciled
                and inked.

So what if blame, as often ascribed, is traced to parents tested on fertile
                drugs, to radiation?
Through suburbs school buses still cruise.  Important villains won't ever go
                home after curfews.

Worse still, dailies ignore exigent kids.  Their existence is denied by
                ballplayers, eggheads.
They won't chat with prom queens, politicians, or earn a TV special.  Their
                parents'll never marvel.



Jack Hayes
© 2010 

This poem originally appeared in Timbuktu