I waited until I felt the
unimportant, repetitious, traveling,
and purposeful distractions,
some kind of irritation
I could “actually” apply,
something I really allowed
to define me.
I doubt he’d ever want to,
because my generation is,
and I quote, “me, me, me.”
I want a vacation.
That’s the only place where
I picture a “pic” of him
absolutely exhausted,
physically losing,
changing his life in a big way.
I gave into sleep today
Folded myself so small, that
I made friends with my knees
Played with my hair
And refused to let myself snore.
I woke at 19:45, stretched and dozed again
Straight into REM, and dreams of you
The pang in my conscience
The hole in my heart.
I sleep until I am empty,
Blank enough for a thought to come along.
Enter me, inspire me, cause me to wake
Allow me some actions
So that I may throw open the shutters
That obscure the outside world, so I can
Clean my apartment
Make that call or run that hill
And find myself in your space
Asking you the important things
Like how do we get back.
Love bends like light around found objects,
a destitute white Ford, say,
with one red door and Florida plates,
while the shadows invite themselves,
a museum of dark carvings,
police marksmen in the windows.
Imagine the most rapturous dinner,
something Vanderbilt would have ordered for his last meal.
Say…
A two-inch filet steak,
cooked exactly rare all the way through,
yielding its sealed juices to the needless serrated blade;
broiled vine-ripened tomatoes,
fragrant with basil and a little cracked pepper;
shoestring potatoes fried in clarified butter;
Béarnaise and roasted garlic on the plate,
which you ignore—the food is perfect as is.
A say-when glass of dry, full-bodied red tops it off.
No dessert;
you’ve just hit the threshold of perfect satiation.
You’re still dreaming about it in the morning.
You go to the breakfast table;
that dinner, complete to the last molecule,
is looking up at you,
confident that you have nowhere else to go.
It’s there again for lunch
and dinner
and breakfast the next day.
That ideal dinner
is the perfection that palls.
You hurl off pounds for lack of will
to force down that thrice-daily gastronomic ultimacy;
you’d dearly love to send a letter bomb
to every butcher and greengrocer you ever knew.
Think of that next time you read the gossip sheets,
and don’t know why the chiseled hunk
and starlet with heathen goddess contours
are throwing things after a month shacked up.
Before the war we all had dreams
But with each passing day
One more dream goes unachieved.
Not only soldiers’ dreams disappear
But dreams of children and spouses
Are shattered with the arrival
Of that hated envelope
That carries the news
Of reality, of war.
Every time a bullet sounds
A dream of returning home
Ends along with the dreamer
And with each new death
A little more hope is lost
And faith begins to fade.
Each time I fire my gun
I need to try to forget
That with each life I take
I create more
Shattered dreams.