I wanted to fall in love urgently and forever
to carve it into trees, or, in lieu of trees, into telephone poles.
I wanted the love to be returned, and for us
the “us” to carry ourselves into the future like
a procession of houses, each one, with two windows
for eyes, a door for a mouth, each singing
in four-part harmony the song “Gloria” until the t-shirts
glowed white in the dark, and brill cream returned.
I wanted to be a cliché, a favorite dance couple on
American Bandstand, a man, falling asleep
with someone to throw a cover over him. I wanted to be
looked at while I slept, or to gaze upon the face
I cherished that slowly changed, and grew deeper,
more deeply loved, a sinecure of grace.
I wanted to laugh in the diner, sing in the kitchen
raise children to go off and raise surgeons, <
I wanted to escape the rope memory of drinkers,
the tangles early deaths, the foreclosures,
the unrequited, the weirding of my own heart, the
bitterness like a 20-lane highway, me, limping
trying so hard to cross it, bleeding from a femoral,
praying God might overrule the obvious.
I saw a man covered in the coiling of snakes,
his own past devouring him. I cried out for mercy
and my voice came back at me, saying my name.
The rope memory twisted and there was no sword
to cut its coils. The generations counted off
their sorrows, and each was a wave of the sea.
I wanted to be a wave, and in that, I succeeded.
And I heard my own soul booming on the first new moon,
whispering out—foam, retreat gone all that is vast, leaving
a tiny cluster of shells—each with its own memory
hardened into lines, the braille of a history
no one has ever translated—the gibberish of stars.