Published in Edition Four (2024) as part of the Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune column

 

“My certainty is wild, weaving 

For you, I am a child, believing

You lay beside me sleeping on a plane

In the future”

–– Certainty, Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You.

 

Now, as you have oft heard me say, learned reader,

Blue eyes can be cold.

Blue eyes in a man’s empty head

Signify disaster, Cassandra foretold.

Blue eyes in an angel, however,

Make it easy to imagine a life in love.

She is magic, undersold.

You can surely, learned reader, imagine a life in love.

In love,

In love,

Imagine a life in love.

“You know that means something, right?”

“Love is a construct,” I whisper back

Under an erratic umbrella in the rain, I think

Even if I could, I wouldn't take it back.

And I know that it means something, now

Love is not a construct to me anymore

Even if you try to disallow

Love is what I feel evermore

Anymore

Anymore

Love is not a construct anymore.

 

“I really wanted to kiss you today”

Now, we all have wishes, granted,

But who has wishes granted? I wanted to recite

A star, I suppose, I charted

And a goddess I found, for real this time.

Take my hand and lead me to wherever you want me

A deity, after kindergarten, in her prime

I’ll stay wherever you want me

Me,

Me,

Because for once I know that you want me.

 

Back to the blue eyes,

If I may, if you don’t mind, can I please

I’m the extraneous variable in a carefully made plan

A ripple in a midnight pool, if you please.

For what are her eyes if not swirling blue planets?

Yeah, I’ll save the motherfucking bees.

But the sum is worth more than those incredible magnets

I want us to live, so I’ll save the bees

The bees,

The bees,

I’ll still save the bees.

 

I wake at four ante meridiem,

Like some kind of addict,

Prick my finger in my Instagram DMs.

I am constitutionally superior to reason, it’s an edict.

Still one of these days I’ll retire from catching thieves

And try my hand at growing roses

Devote myself to Gaia’s earth, as she may please,

Surrounded by a garden of thorns and roses

Roses,

Roses,

In a puddle of thorns and roses.

 

I sometimes stab myself with my own sword,

You say I’m wrong, “out of my mind”

I keep you like a diary,

You seem to want something to hide behind.

You don’t know that even still I think of the mandarin

Sliding across the room

A voice note about a mandarin,

My only thought in the plane seat with no legroom

The room,

The room,

A mandarin, sliding across the room.

 

I want to use my last $4 to buy something you’ll like

A house, or a car, or Nutri-Grain,

A highly sought after internship as an archaeologist,

Hunting the beautiful and arcane

While I sit idly by in a kaftan, loving your work forever.

We’ll dine on roses and books we cut into pieces like cake,

I, dressed as an angel, and you my God, together,

Lying there, hardly awake

Awake,

Awake,

Hardly ever awake.

 

At this point I’m just riffing,

But what I mean to say is, it

Doesn’t matter that you’re symbolic of Helen’s brothers

Most important thing in my life is no longer the bit

There’s a compulsive divine force, a moonbeam

I sing to a small guitar, on a boat

Blue angel, yeah, you’re in my dream

I will sing to you, to my guitar, on a boat

A boat,

A boat

I will sing to a small guitar on a boat.

 

Never have I been gladder to be wrong

And let England shake!

For I have stolen the crown jewels,

The way a child is often wont to take,

Of this whole goddamn planet

Jewels like the stone of that warm, bright, moon

For us, the stars are in transit

And we’ll dance by the light of their moon

The moon,

The moon

Dance by the light of the moon.