Blowing Up Things

Cherry bombs.
Bottle rockets.
M80's.

Inch-and-a-halves.
Wisconsin summers on Beaver Lake.
Those were the true days.

We blew up things:
Stumps. Gopher holes.
Toilets. Ant hills.
Barbie. The lake.

The instructions on Black Cat firecrackers:
"Light fuse, then retire quickly."

We were masters of shredded
red paper tubing,
gods of carbon-charred craters.
We didn't feel like retiring.

In august, we decided it was time
for a pyrotechnical paradigm shift.
Being the best team out there,
we stepped up:

black powder,
match heads and shotgun ammo,
potassium nitrate & powdered sugar,
Clorox and Drano. ¹
We mixed, tested, sniffed.
We led the industry.

Then summer ended, and the god of
14 year old boys who blow up things
became weak-kneed.

White smoke, black smoke -
we had it all.