We fished for carp whose flesh would never find

out lips, the bottom feeds fathers said to kill.

We fished at night with bloody bait designed

to draw them up from river mid. Our will

was to possess a life not ours, to make

those glowing spirit bodies understand

our need for blood spilled simply for the sake

of what we thought it took to be a man.

I'll never understand that rage we knew,

that knife that someone gouged into the eyes

of carp we caught but didn't think to do

the killing right, and wasted lives despised

for reasons lost now in the blur of days.

Not boys, but something darker, something crazed.