Want
In Seattle, late June, it’s light
at 11 o’clock at night as I walk
the long road home from downtown, up
Denny Way to Westlake Avenue into Fremont
after getting to the bus stop with no money,
and I have found the way to Want.
A car drives by playing rap music,
Tupac Shakur, who wanted. I’m not
supposed to understand, but when the bus
passes me without stopping
I pull Want from my pocket
and Want speaks in a voice like Want spoke
to Tupac, like it yells across Queen Anne hill
to you and talks to my sister, buried
34 years ago. Let me believe the dead want
this poem. Let’s think that everyone wants
to hear what will appear. Let’s agree
this poem will figure out what questions to ask,
like a sparrow pecking fresh seeds
from rot. Like a random collect call
that ends in the afterworld thanking
the Lord who, I think, never wants. But Want is
an insatiable passion, and faith is,
while reason remains a mere shade
allowing me the patience to fill
this page with want and words, like soldiers
filling Cellini’s mouth slowly with earth
thinking he was dead at twenty-six. The past
is a foreign country. We in the twentieth century
want the whole truth gathered together
once and for all in a band called Easy Consensus,
a safety that should stop me from thinking
you will be attracted here, a vacant parking lot
a half mile away from the intersection
of Westlake and Fremont Avenue as Want retains
its own agenda, craving questions.
Will you be in bed tonight? Will essential
become unavoidable? Language suddenly able
to describe Tupac getting shot
for the respect someone wanted
to slide into like a pair of new pants
in Vegas, eight hours from your home in Reno,
48 long hours from my sister’s grave
in Erie, PA. Some wants are cheap and disingenuous,
the bullet wanting to extricate someone
from the BMW, and these become bigger, brasher,
self-assured; they rain sirens down on us;
we become bigger, brasher, more self-assured,
able to rise up from the drains and stand
equal to the twenty-foot man
hammering in front of the museum.
His hammer wants to touch his other hand
but is stuck reading Want’s hundred page manual,
the ancient heritage of the human race,
the drift away which always leaves
other unanswerables--he comes up short.
My heart? All is want and all manner of things
shall want. We want to hear the a capella gospel
singers in Pike Place Market, in glittering gold
shirts singing to a Midwestern pack and I am
part of it, I cheer my corn-dog
through this state-fair throng and listen
to the slap of palms on salmon.
I want you. But Want’s late,
still walking the harbor steps
with Jimmy Stewart, Mitchum, Cousteau,
Shakur, my sister, Cellini.
In the night I know the dead
want long past dying, that my heart
is gone. Hear that, that’s the sound
of a man whose heart is gone
in the drizzle as one bliss-filled
moment like light on Lake Union fades.
I follow Want and Want leads me here,
where I envision your legs that move within
your short skirt while stars block out
the hungry want of streetlights.
The Fremont bridge rises to cover
the want of a boat, my steps
stop, meeting up with Want for a snatched
conversation. You wide-eye
the sky. You empty space.
I only wanted a way home,
to ride in Tupac’s BMW,
the 300th page of Cellini’s autobiography,
I only wanted
to be the picture on your wall.
I chase Want up Francis Avenue, up ordinary
steps that lead to my bedroom, where I will
continue to want to know
what will make you listen. What do you
want? What is Want? Why is a twenty-foot-tall
hammering man getting bigger until he dwarfs
us, this Seattle, this U.S.A., this night,
this Want that has given birth to this line
that bears me out of itself, bloody
and screaming, slaps me on the ass,
cuts the umbilical cord, ties
it tight, walks me into my room to find
that it too wants, unable to avoid the sounds
of feet walking toward it, the mouth opening
to eat, saliva coming on with the tide to cover us. |
Foreign Policy
In the Italy of your life, everyone
is pouring red bottles of Merlot
and has put out the cat after candles
shimmed down to warm white nubs.
The shades are cracked to cool air,
sheets pursed like lean lips almost
open. One couple becomes two couples
who in turn become three and like
a sweet stain everyone is suddenly
the next glass of wine, the next
scotch and soda, the next imported slice
of American cherry pie ala mode.
Someone affluent enough dims the lights.
The experience expands until the world
is eaten by one couple who shed skin,
waltzing past each other. Then, of course,
there was that night when I was 28
and absolutely nothing happened
while I waited for your call.
It became the Austria of my life
as I traveled between brown couch
and brown chair, a drinking glass
full of yesterday’s news. I watched
an episode of Hawaii 5-0
while eating a pear grown in a green
orchard miles away. Then two thousand
lonely others put dishes into cupboards
and I did, too. Everyone shut off
electric evening, tucking empty night in.
What about the next morning? What about
suicide and madness? What about India
and lovers buried under sleet in Siberia?
My crowded globe stops its spin
right on you, waiting for University Avenue’s
Bus 74, as kids speed by on skateboards
that have been around the world.
Drop three quarters and a stubby dime
into the metal slot and ride
a crowded gondola, a submarine,
a random moment of being
apart or together within billions,
ride all the humming miles
into our later life’s tropical Aruba. |
