From a tatty red T, on a skinny grey teen,
head cocked, mind aloft,
he stares down the rifle barrel of the world.

To a tatty red T, on a skinny grey teen,
sweat-stained and rain-clung while electric guitars blazed and churned
and hands fumbled with a clumsy smoke burning holes in the shirt…
and a plot.

Rat-a-tat! Flashback.
Like machine gun rounds
to a novelist’s dark heart.