WHAT HE WANTS
He wants not to be so bitter at the world all the time
He wants to know that he is clean
He wants to stop working such exorbitant hours every
semester
Wants to read a book a week
He wants to get his shit together
He wants a pair of shoes that doesn’t have holes in them
Until he remembers the famed photograph of
Jonathan Larson holding up his pair of sodden
Converse sneakers limp by the top heel
As if the holy spirit
In ornithological dove form
Had just been shot dead with a pellet gun
He wants not to drink so much on the weekend
He wants to fuck her brains out
He wants the canvas of the screen to be the
Sunrise
he looks into first thing in the afternoon
When he rises (because he works third shift
And sleeps on a futon he found near the dumpster)
He wants security
He wants to finish the book he started eight years ago
He wants to be able to pay off his debts
He wants to go down to his father’s grave
And tuck his chin into his neck
As his face falls into a
Triangle of wet prisms
He wants to really be there for his mother
But more than anything else
he wants to wake up one morning
In the hard frost of early February
And find her body asleep
Next to his body
Her chin and lips
Exhaling invisible ripples
Paddling across the dashboard of his chest
He wants to take a moment
And just look at the way
Her forehead and her cheekbones
Form a gentle meadow of peace
The warmth of her body
The serene pasture of
her eyelids
The amen of the prayer that is to come.
