I want to be with you
when you take that cab ride from Baltimore
to Virginia Beach.

You don’t have to know me.
You don’t even have to like me.

These days I wear old shirts,
fit into my vest as best I can
and expect nothing less than the sound of my voice
to keep me awake for the rest of my natural life.

My heart will not belong to a fresh-faced
pyromaniac anytime soon,
so I’d be waiting in the car when you come out.

I want to be sitting in the backseat
when you hand the driver a fifty,
brush the smoke from your hair and the ash
from your shoulders.

The time should be around six when it all goes down.
Coworkers should be just about finished
going through your secrets over and over again.
Street musicians should be almost ready to pack it in
to wait for the summer revolution to turn wishful thinking by October.

Las Vegas odds will favor the meek at long last,
and I want to be around for when you finally make some noise
at that office building where they’ve got the basement boxes
on the seventy-fifth floor and the good whiskey
in a different building three thousand miles away.

I want to hold your hand.
No one has to look at each other
and make small talk stand taller than the inevitable tale.
We don’t need to tell the driver what happened back there,
or why you can’t stop humming and kissing the roof
of the car with your hand at every devil’s crossroad.

I want to comfort someone for a change.
There’s no reason why I need to tell you anything
more than that.

Insight is not at stake here.
It’s not going to shatter the break,
and it’s not going to make you any smarter.

You shouldn’t worry about whether or not we’ve met before.

This isn’t some kind of weird fun,
but it isn’t the end of the world either.

Tomorrow morning
they’ll build three new buildings
to replace the old one,
and they’ll give everyone the afternoon off
to mourn the loss of their coffee cups
and hidden beer cans.

By the time the weekend rolls
around you’ll be in bed dreaming
of his arms surprising you around the midsection.

I’ll be walking to Richmond
to greet the blizzard and those new helicopters.

02/10/2010

Posted on 02/10/2010
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