By Jerry Williams
An autumn shadow draws across my room.
This morning’s remedy hasn’t kicked in.
I’m losing the bookshelf wars.
Not to a doctor, but to a dream horizon
dotted with enormous nylon sacks
of arrogance and longing and gloom-filled sloth.
I wanted more. There it is.
I wanted so much more to issue forth.
Wrong or right, I wanted to walk under a bridge
wearing a hat made of prose
and sing Buddy Holly songs in Russian.
I wanted to sell fire and sirens door to door.
Forget the stamen and the pistil.
I wanted a soy toy. I wanted more.
I could eat the breeze right off the curtains.
I wanted to get to the point where what I’m allowed
actually feels like what I desire.
Maybe I should have married A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
and all the rest, but I had to child-proof my entire future,
stand on the roof with a shotgun diploma,
and campaign for National Verb Month.
I wanted to arrive at a different concourse.
I wanted the perfect outlet
for whatever coal dust I might cough up.
I wanted exploits, vehemence, divergence,
characters screaming at each other onstage,
slicing off fingers and chucking them
into the prop sink and then laughing their guts out,
doubled over, tears streaming down their faces,
guffawing, blood up and down their forearms,
gravel and antiquities underfoot.
No big deal. No human pyramids.
I wanted to love someone so hard
(s)he would never forgive me.
I wanted to rob a bank with a golf club.
I expected more of myself.
I wish I heard voices.
I wish pinatas were filled with naked students and Vicodin.
I thought I would be the scariest mummy
in the museum by now,
but all I am is preparedness,
the implements of my sterility laid out in the dusk.
This here: This is not even what I wanted to say.
I’ve failed at reverse prayer,
failed to understand my own eyes.
It’s getting dark and I can hear my neighbors creaking.
They must hide the pigeons at night.
My greatest fear is that the love of my life
will be the onewho pushes the needle,
the one who tells me to start counting backwards
from forever.