Memory Poems

Many of my recent poems deal with
memories. Here's one that covers,
symbolically, a lot of personal
territory:

TURNING-UP

Being a mensch meant
turning-up,
like with schoolboy fights:
I never won, not once,
but never a time
I didn't turn-up
scared, hopeless, fighting
Georgie Beckman, Irving Berman,
a ring of guys around us shouting
"hit, hit."

The world kept saying
"I don't like you, Spacks,
meet me after school in the alley."

And I'd turn-up.