I don’t remember the first mushroom I had.
I can’t remember the last time rainbow stars weren’t falling
from the sky, why I’m addicted to jumping on flagpoles,
or why I shoot fireballs after eating flowers.
I’m addicted, but it’s not a problem.
I think.

I can see flying turtles with wings.
They keep throwing hammers at me.
I punch bricks
hoping coins come out of them,
because I somehow got the idea
that if I got a hundred gold coins
I could buy myself a new life.

I want a life with a steamy
red hot princess
in a flowing pink dress
living in a bourgeois castle
where the smell of peaches
breathes life into every fiber
of my mustachioed being.

Sometimes I think my brother is green
with envy, when all he really does is pick daisies.
Why should he be jealous?
He’s taller, slimmer,
and he doesn’t have to work as tirelessly as I do.
But, I’ve always jumped higher,
reached further, and punched harder.
It’s not my fault he chooses to stay in my shadow.
That little *****.

I sometimes ride on a green dinosaur's back.
I’m a baby floating away in a bubble,
and that dinosaur saved my life
far too many times to count.
He’s my best friend.

Sometimes I like to put on my blue hat
and pretend that I’m invisible.
Sometimes I put on my green hat
and pretend I’m as hardened as a mafia gangster.
I am Italian after all. It’s in my blood.

I want to quit, but I can’t. I don’t need to.
I’m doing fine with these mushrooms.
I feel larger than life with the red ones,
and the green ones
resurrect me.