If I summed you up
I’d abstain from strained
refrain, from those mushy
lines that read like a hike
through a swamp. An inkwell
tipped, they pour from trite
lips and taint a masterpiece.
But you were not made
to bathe in black cliché;
you: the product of Someone’s
fantastic oration; spoken to life,
left in my sight. And I, but the
by-chance observer, who only
knows what not to say.

If you were to ask me, i'd
Laugh it off, saying
Of course i do, sweetie. why
Verify? three words
Each day suffice, so
You know, right?                 no, wrong.
Only, ever, always: you.
Uncontrollably, hopelessly, totally, i do.

my sunny days were spent
cooking plastic spaghetti noodles over
a wrinkled sticker depicting an oven eye
while kate shuffled through invisible mail
and tended to our adopted stuffed animals
imitating her mother’s affection.

my sunny days were spent
building lego castles on the cool screen-in porch
while the radio played mellow weezer
that was suddenly replaced by sparks
and foul smoke because of billy’s antics
with the hissing water hose.

my sunny days were spent
drawing tattered pirate maps on jelly-smudged
napkins that guided us—the brave hardened
rapscallions—to the attic to horde stores of
gold and to battle foes in the dusty shadows
with our swords made of cardboard.

my sunny days were spent
hiding and seeking until mom’s heels
clicked up the hot asphalt driveway where
she would chastise me for the mess i had made
of myself in cuts scrapes and grass stains
worn by me as medals of honor.

I read a story to my son. Really,
I am composing it, off the cuff, but
there is no reason his mother should know.

One day, Elliott built a rocket ship.
His rocket ship was going to take him to the moon.

The boy sees nothing silly in this, and
for a second, I don't, either.

And every spare minute, Elliott worked on his rocket.
When he was at school, he drew out in
blue, and chalk-white, a dream for his rocket.
When his mother told him to do his homework,
he worked on his rocket.
When his mother left him
in the dining room to finish his carrots,
he worked on his rocket.
"I wish I could work on a rocket,
instead of eating vegetables."
Tonight, you won't have to.

One day, Elliott finished his rocket, and he went to the moon.

From the Moon, he heard the earth mumble.
From the moon, he saw the tide hug the shore,
and knock down his sister's sandcastle, left
on the beach from the summer before.
From the moon.

"He saw China!"
And Brazil. And India.
"And he got to see what his school looks like at night!"
He wouldn't know that, as a a boy, I went safely walking there,
and as a foulmouthed teen, I was drunk in the playground, at night.
That I looked down, from the hospital adjacent when my father was there.

He asks if, from the moon, you could see plain
the shadows of the craters on our planet, too broad
to behold, on sidewalks and soccerfields, during a game.
"You could. All the shadows, in the cities and the seas."
And his ruby face relaxes, deeply struck,
and musing, I think, that maybe
shadows aren't all bad.

Elliott came back, in time that his mother,
could wake him up, and he could loudly fake a snore.
And he righted his sister's sandcastle.
He went to Brazil.
He was drunk on playgrounds.
He saw shadows. They weren't so bad.

And often, when he would walk on the
sidewalk, his feet would feel light, like he
was on the moon again.

"Because the Moon has no gravity."
No gravity at all.

When I leave, and land beside my wife in bed,
I admire the helmet on my mantel,
I crumble old moondust in the paw of my suit,
I feel, still, the dimples of the sheets,
light, and shadowed, like the clefts of the moon.

I do not want your love.
It's too large for my hands to carry,
too slippery for my lips to say
And if you gave it to me
I'd only give it back away.

What I want are your little smiles,
that like tinsel decorate the minutia, the minutes, the moments.
I want them anytime and every-time.
to brand them and keep them and call them mine.

I do not want your desire.
It's too ugly to look at,
and too persistent to bear.
and if you put your hand in mine
I would pretend it wasn't there.

I want our lives to be like train-tracks
that never touch, well, never much.
and far away seem to converge, embrace
brought together by an optical illusion's almost-grace.

I do not want your trust.
It's too delicate to display
and too complex to comprehend
And when I gave you mine,
you sold it to a friend.

I want my leaving to be like loosing a balloon.
with a moment when your eyes slowly rise,
rise to the crests of cirrus and you sigh,
sigh softly, tenderly, but oh-so audibly out-loud,
and then grab for the string, through the crowd--
but I am gone, gone into the rivers of cloud.

I do not want that sigh,
I /need/ it for it is your due.
It shows that you will miss me
as I have long missed you.

Ribbons in you hair.
Diamonds in your ears.

Magazine clippings line the floor.
Pictures clutter the desk.
Friends, lovers, family.

You feel like a faked ******, unwanted.
Clinging to what you know is right
and bordering what you know is wrong.

Playing Russian roulette with fate.
Rolling the dice and raising the stakes.
Neither will save you now.

But don't forget to smile and
Bat your lashes.
For when we leave you to rest in peace.