It’s on the perpetual to-do list
that runs on a perpetually spinning wheel
powered by a perpetually thirsty ventriloquist
with amazing legs and a view of the city
he wants to die in.

It’s a dream as big as the one of that aging doctor
who wants to cure his stutter before pleading
his great and final case to the jury on Monday.

This is simple psychological arithmetic.
Anyone can learn to play this song
by keeping a steady walk as they leave somebody behind.

When I finally get to sleep in until eight a.m.
I promise you
that I’ll finally be the sympathetic,
amazing person my second impression
on people always seems to suggest.

I’ll be the Friday night hero
of whatever board game you want to play.

Regular church attendance will never be in my future,
but I’ll learn to celebrate each and every day
in which the roof listens to the news and keeps from collapsing.

I will never again fall in love with a fetish model,
and I won’t bring more than a hundred dollars to Dallas.

You’ll be proud of me. You’ll consider my conversation
when you finally go to Cleveland to be a big star
in whatever performance you commit to
for the next forty-years.

There might be a time again when you let me
hear over the phone whatever song’s been stuck
in your pretty head all day at work.

People laugh when they talk about your patience.
I’ve never found it funny.
They get a kick out of the way you talk to yourself.
I want to fill in the blanks without winking.

Twenty pounds of weight loss in twenty years
would be fine, but I think we could shake that off
over three days in a room without a TV.

All I need is a little more faith.
All I ask is for a time and place to meet up.

I’m at least sixty-percent sure I can stand up,
hold myself steady and make up
for as much lost time as you want to dictate
with your gorgeous, troubling fingernails.

You just have to believe that I’m finally ready
to embrace the kind of change
that takes most people like me to the cleaners.

07/17/2011

Posted on 07/18/2011
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