1. As if from the moon he looks down, Knees shaking, at his watery grave Waiting to take him in. Then flaps his arms With the winged exuberance of a baby bird, Shouts “Geronimo!”
And flings himself off the high board, His skinny little body flash-frozen Like a popsicle The instant it strikes the water.
2. Reads The Stranger when he’s nineteen
And feels locked inside its plot,
Windows barred, ashes in the fireplace
His destiny. Needs a speedy getaway,
Drops out of college and moves to LA,
Sunshine his second language now
Until he gets burned by his girlfriend’s
Bonfire of blazing red hair.
3. Trapped inside love’s shallow hell
Between her beauty and the door,
He’s mesmerized by her midnight eyes
Bright as massacres when the moon is full,
And quickly masters the art of forgiving
Her reflection for never straying beyond
The range of a mirror.
4. Is also familiar with the fact
That her lips are blank checks
Waiting to be filled in—and doesn’t care,
Just plays the fool in his own way
Each time she picks his twenty dollar bills
Like lettuce.
Friends wonder how he survives it.
5. Idealistic by nature,
Shy as a small forest creature
And just as romantic as the next guy,
He believes in the grooving
Of their hearts together
Because to whom can he talk grand
If not to her?
6. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong
Because he’s no fun anymore, so uncool
He’d apologize to a tree for the legs of his chair. That’s why she’s tired of being a role model
For what the human race would be like
If it ever learned how to behave itself.
“Marry me,” he pleads, “and we’ll dance forever
On love’s endless polished floor
And even have room for a dog.”
“Down on all fours! Down on all fours!”
She commands as she gives him a tug
On his choke-chain----did you ever!
Then disappears behind a cloud of Chanel
So rare it has its own unlisted number.
What prevents this from getting really squalid
Is his ability to see things her way
And kill his impulse to shout,
“Have a heart attack!”
7. Her legacy? Hope’s broken antenna.
All right. Okay. So what? No problem.
He can take it because this sort of catastrophe
Has happened to him before.
Convinced that only dead girls are nice
He breaks in his pain like a pair of new shoes
By leading a Spartan life, sort of:
No huge enthusiasms or loud cafes
Where bar girls hang out
And only the occasional use
Of recreational drugs,
His life tiresome, unsubstantial
8. Until he discovers
There’s a world out there
When he meets his future wife,
Her love the bait, his S-O-S the hook,
Her touch the Yes-Oh-Yes of it,
His happiness so compressed
It keeps expanding into old age
And when too much increases into even more
He steadies it with shaky hands
In reverent benediction
As if it were a glass of sacramental wine
And doesn’t spill a drop.
In this and only this is his salvation.
***
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