Exoskeleton

Before reading Patrick Kavanagh's "I Had a Future" 

It's 1990 
I'm 26

the Cold War has passed

it's late afternoon but it was probably morning

off the 42 bus walking home from class -

in a sudden buffeting blow

of yellow fliers, pizza boxes,

butts, grit, dirt, the news.

Calling no one
for an hour I hid

in a phone booth 
to avoid
the pelting rubbish and dust

I watched in the gust
swirl
in columns
over Columbia Road.

At school I'd peeked
in my teacher's mailbox:

my story she'd liked, 
given to a colleague

returned to her covered in an angry hand. 
Mere miles away
SecDef Cheney's heart rate climbs
as he thinks of oil in sand

There, I've done it

I've plagiarized Patrick Kavanagh

and I hadn't even read him yet.
I''m not yet 27 and clear.
On my sofabed at S St NW
the cockroaches are unaware I'm near.
I had no exoskeleton mode

I hid in that phone booth an hour on Columbia Road.
                                                        - J. O'Brien