My Brief Careers, Dean Young
As a doorman I didn’t know who wanted in,
who out. As an anesthesiologist, I wanted
every one awake between the rotten heart
cut out and the motorcyclist’s installed
to say how it felt. Under the robe,
I wore a holster. I became unafraid
of ladders. I confused the word career
with careen. I was a walk-on bastard
with three lines dispensed by the second scene.
I mean how one morning you look in the mirror
and there’s some foreign, yelping argon
but such tenderness in the world:
people and their guard dogs,
snow smashing its crystals in the lawn,
shushing the crows’ ecumenical arguments,
proof of the persistence of the soul
people think you’re crazy if you say so
even though they have their own bird-brained
promises tapped out on the night’s tins
of rebuffed skepticism.
I believe you get to apologize
maybe twice. See a sunset once.
Death, well, I’ve lost count.
It turns out a guitar is a lousy oar,
its wand founders, its head of smoke
can’t empty a spit valve. Stabbed
by the sky, stitched up by an unknown
farce. Dad watching me putt into the windmill,
green ball being knocked back.
It’s all about timing, how if
you’re in the parking lot when she’s lost
her keys, you get to kiss her breasts
but if you’re in Philadelphia, a star explodes.
That poor piece of music used in a movie
thirty years ago still struggling
to freed itself from the seduction of idiots.
I wore a button that said May I help you?
I carried a bucket from the quaking basement.
Who I went to see would soon be dead
and I didn’t know how the tape recorder worked.
Who knew pigeons could be so loud?
Is it okay to take on faith the mountains
when all I trample are ant hills?
Is it all right to let the cricket keep me awake?
Autobiography is a story the fireplace
tells to a swimming pool. I’m not sure
what else to embroider in my hankie.
We have to go soon, don’t we?
I want to touch everything to be sure.
(Source: narrativemagazine.com)
