Hallelujah,
and let’s hope while we’re at it
that I don’t wake up to find out
those kids who have been playing hide and seek
since September passed away last August.

Let’s find a box of light bulbs
under the stairs and pray I never drink so much
that I wake up in a hotel that was torn down
in 1948.

While we’re at it
try and be decent enough,
well-dressed enough to see the man
in question when he’s two blocks away from my front door.

When I was seven
I met him by a long river in a part of the world
usually reserved for dreams or vague outlines of the future.
He said something about leaving nothing but the bones
when I got to be too old to run away from him.

I’m not quite there yet,
but it is taking me upwards of fifteen minutes
to limp two blocks to the grocery store.

Lately and unfortunately more than usual
I’ve been managing dozens of bad dreams.
All in the time it takes me to black out,
fall down the stairs and wake up intact
in the broken shower at my parent’s broken farm.

It’s only kind of absolutely hilarious,
and it does make me wish you could be around
to take care of me more than three nights
out of the five-hundred-day New Year.

I’m willing to ask nicely.
I’m prepared to take you to church on Tuesday.

Just be patient
and listen very carefully for the moment
when all my stories start from the finish
and try to remember what happens after that.

05/13/2010

Posted on 05/13/2010
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