Dinasour Extraordinaire!

Happy Early Birthday You.




A tripping hippie points to a Eucalyptus
and says
"Hey man....didja know man?
That every time you carve your name
into a tree, you get younger by exactly 13 months?"

He carves my name into the tree for me.
Wild eyed. And tie-dyed.
And Ive been holding that pocketknife ever since

Waiting to give it to you.

Because YOU....
are a jukebox full of sad songs

You make me want to wander the south
With a bottle of shine, and a hammer

And pull the nails out of every window sill
That ever kept kids from sneaking out
to an Elvis concert.

This year.
I hid Dynamite
in your roman candle cake
And made you a macaroni necklace.

I want to see your face blast apart
into a run-away run-way smile
My lips could land...

ANYWHERE!

If you wont get up, I'll lie down.
And share your chalk-line mattress
To un-invent your acheing

I have this idea that I can sneak into you
Just un-hinge your doors
Like a cheap magic trick
And waltz down your throat

But most days, I step on a land-mine
before I can drop a coin in you

I want you to know it's OKAY
To sing your blues to me!

I'm in the mood for you

I miss your Antarctica shoulders
like an Astronaut misses gravity

and your equator thighs
the way Kamikazi pilots miss their bombs.

I miss your disguises
the way all adults miss saying "HOLY MOLY!"

Our love is rough.
Sometimes its a wrestling match
Huge oily man in spandex
jumping off a ladder
smashing a chair into your face.

Sometimes its dysfunctional

A NASA rocket launch
To the Saturn.
....Aimed into someones back yard

And we are karate chopping
each others faces into oblivion
to see who gets to push the button

Bad coordinates never stopped anyone
from planting a flag.
or moonwalking.

Sometimes its a Charlie Chaplin movie.
Quiet, and dark as a theater.
And nothing needs to be said.

Its silly.
Like being buried in a tie-dye shirt
and at your own open casket funeral
Nobody will know what to say except
HOLY MOLY

Our love is a city in Alaska
built on goodbye kisses
It has no umbrella stores
And one HUGE airport.

It gives us six months to hibernate
And six more to hit the snooze.

Someday
Id like to grab your ass
throw you over my shoulder
and send us both over the cliffs
to find the coordinates of
every would-be ship slave ship

I hope you know how to sink.

And cut chains.

Our love is a postcard you cant throw away
whether it says "Hi"
or "Greetings from your future Alien Abductor!"

Your veins are spliced with Trigonometry
and I want purge you of every math problem I cant solve
Even if the end equation is YOU>me.

Man, if I had to deploy again
I would bring you with me
So we could organize our own Tank Brigade

Just you and me and ten thousand
"Singing-arm-waiving-in-tongues-speaking-Hallelujah-Amen-Write-Me-a-Check-TV-Evangelists!"

You and I can represent
"The-Broke-Sinning-Hallelujah-Amen-thank-God-we-dont-actually-go-to-this-Church"
Minority.

We will be the "Holy Rollers"
Or maybe even
Holy.......
...........Moly

We preach firepower damnation

And Salvation through HUGE donations
of rabbit feet.

You would become the luckiest girl alive.

And Ghandi would be proud.
With a long drawn out P.

Like this: "Prruuuuuhhhhhhhhhh-ROUD!"

You...
are big during the day
You've got a face that takes up the whole mirror.
And a heart that could spontaneously dis-assemble
Every tank in Tiananmen Square

At night you're small.
You only take up an extra half persons percentage of the bed.

That percentage is too high.

Your Birthday present this year
is a bottle of moths
You can let out to find the light.
or destroy my clothes.

If we lived in Alaska
Your present would be the secret
Of the northern lights.

A Mediterranean circadean rythm

And a pile of deer carcasses
to fatten you up for winter.

If you were turning 81 it would be a
Cake the size of a bed, with 18 Candles
And a "retemodo"
Which is odometer spelled backwards.

You get the point.

If your birthday were spent in prison
Id smuggle you out inside a hollowed Bible
In very small peices

We'd hide in the swamps from the hounds
and hop trains out west to escape the Tommy Guns
and lynch mobs of half the counties in Lousiana.

Man,
If you ever become a dinasour.
Please dont go extinct.

At least not before I get a sample
of your DNA
and a fancy college degree

Because I really hate museums.

Confession:
I took one of your birthday wishes.

And wished that we could have an adventure together.
I dont care what it is.

Flying Plastic Dog shit out of Hong Kong

Hunting Moby Dick

Meeting the Devil on top of a mountain in Tennessee

Or becoming THE premiere trapeze act
at the greatest show on earth
No nets.
Just to tease gravity.

I want you to live to be so old
that the candles on your cake
are a rocket launch inferno at Zero Hour
to which nobodys eyes can adjust

I want your cake to be so damn good
that everyone tries to use your birthday wish
to wish for bigger mouths.

I want you to get so old
that your face looks like beef jerky
And I call you "Ol Hickory"

I want you to get so old
Your party will be the end of the world bash
Thrown to prove the Mayans and Nostradamus wrong,

I want you party to ACTUALLY end the world by causing
a bizzarre mass jailbreak of animals
from every Zoo in the world.

Everyone will be there for that LAST night of
Pirahana pool marco polo.
Gorilla indian-burn madness.
Pin the tail on the menstruating lioness.
"Hide and seek and probably get eaten"
Cheetah tag.
Elephant stampede jolly jump.
Drinking games against Camels.
Python suffocation tire swing.
Hyena dance party feeding frenzy.
Flock of Geese Pillow Fight.
Vulture Charades Slumber Party

I want to bring you a word.
Everyone else will bring one too.
But nobody's will mean the same as mine.

My word is "Whoa"
It means Beautiful
in Kerouac

I want you to get so old
that you wont remember
If I gave you the same thing
when when you got married:
A beaver pelt
And a coupon
for 5 free air guitar lessons!

I want you to get so old.
That I have nothing left to give you but my pocketknife

Man,
If you had that, I'd be a stump,
and you'd be 6 again.

Light Bulb Deliverance

Pillow fights and Thumb Wars. Like Helllo!



I don't know how to be Romantic....
but

if you were the solution to the energy crisis
Id grab your solar panel ass
and slide my rough hand
between your legs
to flip your economy friendly heater on
I'd kiss your white hot, light bulb lips
to seduce you,
and let the eastern seaboard sink into
a century long power outage

....because you move me


If you were the worst techno music ever
Id have the best dance moves on the floor
and you wouldn't have to be ashamed of me anymore
because you'd crack up for a decade
before robo-rocking your hips
to the rythm of cocaine overdose keyboards
after all,
....its just me and you

....and 4 other dudes
on the dance floor

If you were the moon
Id be an army of nerds
sitting behind NASA desks
pumping out math equations
to get to you

we'd search for the the right trajectory
and never worry about the reverse
because breaking apart in the stratosphere
is fine.


we'd make heavy breathing nerd sounds
and speak in nerd
which isnt so much numbers and star wars
as it is
just rare passion

and maybe you'd forgive us
after we mapped you out
as the only thing in the sky


Id stay up late
and turn off the house lights
to peer through a telescope
at you
and wait for you to turn the lights back on


You want to know if you're a something? Or a nothing?
But I dont know how to be romantic....

All I know....is

If you were a war machine wet dream
You'd be the photgraphs inside my helmet
and the cool aluminum dog-tags in the heat
that I carried on every patrol

You'd have your rolling thunder tank breasts
pressed against the top of my head
with your thick landmine thighs
wrapped around my neck

Id suffocate under your
flamethrower kisses
and get ripped apart by
and your teenage orgasm grenades

my face would dissapear
from shotgun lipstick smears
and you're rusty bayonet fingers
would crack my ribs

but I'd wait for your second charge


If you were an atomic bomb
Id handle you with extreme care
but if youe exploded
Id catch all your tiny peices
and wait out the cloud of dust and
vaporized cities
to squeeze you in my palms
and rebuild you under extreme pressure

If you were a drunk
Id be your whiskey
and Id change the calendars
so every day was a good drinking Holiday
and we'd parade around New York Square
in perpetual St. Patty's sillyness
and you'd drink 9 of me, and
spill the tenth down your shirt
And Id say in a Deniro accent
"You lookin at me!?"
every time you opened your eyes
when you drank me
(because Id imagine it was a kiss)
Eventually youd set me on the curb
and crawl to that fire hyrdant

and judo chop its face off
because we both know,
that fire hyrdant,
was staring


If you were a flower for halloween
Id be a bee
in a giant sweaty suit
made of dead dogs and cardboard
Id throw rocks at your window
till you woke from your candy coma
so I could spill my love saturated guts out

You'd sigh and ask me to be romantic...
Id stand in the yard
and tell you....
"Your breasts are like........pillows."
And you'd sigh harder

and then I'd lay the real shit on you
"Can I fluff you pillows?"

I know.
I know.
Total Ladykiller.

Id make
the loudest buzzing sound youd ever heard
BZZZZZZZZZZ
and spread my arms like a bird
And buzz into the streets
before you
could say

Double You

Tea

Eff

Dearest,
I dont know how to be romantic. I dont know how to make you sigh.
I dont know poetry or how to dance. I dont know how to build space shuttles,
or survive atom bomb blasts...
But...

If you were deaf
Id be your silent movie
and I'd talk to you with clumsy hands
to tell you I loved you.
Id sign to you,
about the great electric sound in your chest

because in that cavity there's a movie
that crackles and shines
like the old black and white ones
from the fifties
about the war and the future and love

but eventually, i'd have to stop signing
So I could press down on your skin above your breasts
so lights will shine through your ribs
and sound will swell out of your throat
because the war and the future and love
are all still inside you

if you were blind
Id kiss you the way sailors kiss their girls
like you were a lighthouse
that I'd been flailing my limbs for years
to get to

And that kiss would tell you alot
and Id see a jazz concert in your eyes
because you're not a something.
Or a nothing.

You're an everything.

I dont know how to be romantic.
but....

Im going to take a piss and when I come back we'll talk about the Mighty Duck movies

Shark Belly

I had a hallucination while I was sick with the flu and a fever in a Mosul combat outpost. And the hallucination was me tied to the chest of a whale, diving deep and watching every ancient sea creature, shark, and whale come up from the depths to "Even the Score". I also woke up and watch a commercial featuring a flash of the A-bomb hitting Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And I also was being rained on. And with the fever, ever cold drop of rain felt like a sledgehammer smashing into me. This is the ensuing verbal assault. It should only make sense to people who know what kind of "Home" I'm talking about.



Let me tell you something about home.

Did you know that the flash from the atomic bomb
turned the sand in Hiroshima
into glass?

Thats how your lover wants you to be converted
From the cult
of "Im coming back"
to the religion of
"I am here"

In a flash!

So.
Dont become an avalanche of goodbyes.
Just. Explode!
Like a 3 Mile Island beach house.
Live together in radiated love.
Glow green at night.
Grow three arms and an extra nose.
Concieve Godzilla
So when he leaves one year.
Everybody he meets
Will sigh and say
"His parents must have been skyscrapers"
And they'll be right.

Listen Kid
That bomb took 45 seconds to fall.
Maybe that helps you realize the importance of 45 seconds.
Because even if that bomb fell for 45 years
It wouldnt be enough.

You can invent magic calendars
that read backwards
So that whenever you leave
You're actually going back to her
To fall in love
Over and over
Until your kisses skip like
An overplayed record
And your hearts explode
Like pens on an airplane

You can invent x-ray machines
That show the colors you didnt know existed.
And use them to camouflage the machine gun nests
in your mouth

But in one millionth of a second.
Modern American Science
Can birth a second sun just long enough
to prove that popcorn never lasts past the previews.
Lovers clothes never come off fast enough.
Kites will never take you to the moon.
And doctors will always say its Cancer.

Home can be alot of things.

It can be her body shaking like California
in earthquake season.
Turning your head into a thunder cloud
singing electric hallelujah praises

Sometimes its
Tired arms are the Atlantic swells
grabbing at the sides
of every ship thats leaving your harbor

Its a sleepy fuse
that leads to your head
waiting to be lit and
destroy your nightmares
with the noisy bar-room lullaby
of a thousand sad soldiers
drinking to forget

Its the gypsy kid spirit
That glows electric
in all train-station lanterns

And the tunnel a dozen kids
Dug from Santa Monica Pier
To China,
But never filled up.

Its one of the millions of
miracles of light.
that died over Roswell
in the 50's

Sometimes the weary walls of
a Hospital Corridor are Home.

And its buckling under too much bad news

For some people Home is a coal mine
in Pennsylvania
that will swallow them as it swallowed
every other honest working man
for 6 generations.

Home can fit in places air cannot.

There are no canaries in that house.
But the Descent Cages hold a dozen men.
and release them like doves
into the tunnels

So they can get used to being lowered into the ground.

But more importantly,
to make them feel like birds.

Kids want to feel like birds.
I want to feel like a bird.

You want to feel like a bird.

For some people
Home is an old Victorian house
built outside the city.
And when Katrina rolled in
the exodus started,
and all the windows and doors
were boarded up
and painted with
"We're coming back"

And they've been renting the 7 O'clock news ever since.
Paying for it, with the cash of their ears
Hearing every day
"You cannot go back"

Home is the reason we invent time machines.
Its the burts of red and green
All over the room on Christmas Eve
And the look on your face
that says "Im going to attack you. Fiercley"

For sharks its the ocean.
Every damn drop of it.
You can breathe in it
As much as you can drown in it.
Believe me!
Because since Hiroshima
I have been a shark
thats mouth has been gaping
its whole life
so that maybe
someday
in all my desperate yawning

I can say
that the WHOLE ocean
has passed through my gills

Because if you can never be the ocean.
Well then,
You can never be anything....

I know you've been chumming the water
with the meat and blood
of your own arms and legs
You'll sleep in my belly when I come back.

Listen Kid.
The reason I look so familiar is because
I had been everywhere before Hiroshima.
Where I forgot my tinted goggles.
And couldnt look away

If everybody could have seen what I saw
There would be no such thing as war.
Or Atomic fission.
And the Enola Gay would remain a Holy name

And when houses creaked at night
It was just them doing their best to say
"Thankyou for sleeping in me, just one more night."

I found your thighs and shoulders
In a cloud of red
In the Kuroshio

Converted and Baptized
Amen

We are the Avalanche

For a pair of specifically heavy boots. For the barn that almost burned to the ground when the planets aligned and we all acidentally came home. For everyone back home that still wants to tuck me in.



My name is Lee.
At least my first name is.
The most important thing you should know about me
Is that I like to put

"Universe, Milky Way Galaxy
Earth, North America"

preceeding my address.

I like to be sure.

Since I turned 9,
Ive been measuring my age
in Dog years.
A ratio of 1 human year to 7 dog years.

I am almost 630 dog years old now.

I am the opposite of young

And I know I can get kinda preachy these days
But I need someone to know the value of listening
And being sure

When I was a boy,
All the snow in the mountains melted
And the river swelled into our house
Like a long acheing scream that the mountains finally let out
after keeping the worlds secrets for a thousand years

The secrets were so loud
I thought it would break me in half
To listen to them howling in that flood.

At night the water rose even higher
and I watched all our horses get washed away by the current
Their eyes were HUGE
But they stayed so very VERY silent.

I asked my father why they stayed so quiet
When they knew they were going to drown

He said:

On the 2nd night at Gettsyburg,
Our artillery was landing on the 8th Virginia Cavalry Regiment
on Cemetery ridge.
And the whole ridge was ablaze

All we could see was the frantic silhouettes of men and horses
churning into long shadows in the smoke

We choked on the fog of gunpowder
and watched the only Yankee unit from Virginia
get torn down to skeletons

Many of the men had brothers and fathers
and even sons up there....

The tremendous roar of artillery
from down by the Peach Orchard
and the distant yelling of men
and neighing of horses
was all we heard for most of the night
until one soldier let out a cry unlike anything
we'd ever heard
from the dying OR the dead.

We were bombing his sons company.

We leaned our faces on our muskets
And every time the dull explosions lit up the clouds
you could see our entire regiment
wish they were on the recieving end of cannons that night

General Lee was on his horse watching this with us.
And I watched in silence right nex to him.
After the better half of an hour
he looked down from his horse
and told me himself,
that he could annihilate the entire Army of the Potomac
in a single maneuver.
And he could do it "TONIGHT!"

But he turned away and kept watching
the way old sea captains used to watch the Atlantic
Every time they knew "Tommorow" was THE day
that they fell off the edge of the earth

General Lee knew...
HE KNEW!
The next day would have to be the last day of the battle

...But he could hear the electrical storm of Americas heart-beat
Throbbing in the air seperating the two armies
A tremendous pump puMP PUMPING
Louder than all the cannons in the war

The last thing he said to me was
"The only thing seperating those men from us.
Is that field.... that DAMNED FIELD!"

His eyes were as wide and orange as the ridge.
And JUST as sad.

Because he wasn't talking about distance.

Lee stayed silent for the rest of the night.
Even past the end of the bombardment.
And Americas thick heartbeat spoke to him
and pleaded "Not tonight"

And so the next day, Lee threw the war

On that very field

And Pickett tried to strap a giant magnet to his chest.
And paint his uniform like a big red bullseye
And ride his horse to the front of the charge

My father leaned towards my ear and finshed by saying
"Sometimes, we are supposed to lose our armies.... and even the war."

I asked him how I'd know when to lose MY war.
And he said "Just be silent, and listen. Like the horses."

His answers were always stories.
I think because he had a mustache.

The next month brought the fever and
that was the last story my father was able to tell me
But that story is why I have my name.

Well,
The water rolled in under our door for days
until it filled up the first floor
It swallowed ma's rocking chair
And then it rose past the pictures on the wall
Until it pushed our family to desperation
And we sat on the roof waiting for the river to rise to us...
Maybe even INTO us

It brought the ice age

My sister and I
made a telephone out of a two tin cans
and a long string
And I would talk her to sleep from one side of the roof
When she was cold

That was the closest my sister and I ever got

On that rooftop, waiting for the Ark
Seeing our own breaths in a can,
but hearing the others voice
It was like magic

And my stories kept her warm

One night she packed up two suitcases and went to sleep.
I snuck downstairs and felt them to see if they were heavy.
To see if she was really leaving

They were boulders.

We think she left for New York to be a nurse
Back then we didnt have Milk Carton kids
And we never heard from her again

Except once I think....

It was when the Palmers bought thier Model T,
It was the first time I rode in an automobile.
And we were laughing as we drove down the road
that led by ma and pas old house

We passed a young woman in the road,
with two suitcases banging against her thighs
as she struggled up the dirt road

I watched her summer dress flutter in our wake
Her face was veiled by the dust
But I just KNEW it was her
Somehow. I could feel it in my chest.
I felt like an avalanche
Waiting on a mountain for a suprise "HELLO!"
to bring me crashing down at the speed of light
to reply
I felt very heavy. And very happy.

Its strange how the first time you ride in an Autombile,
You can wish they were never invented

When we got to the end of the road,
I left the Palmers, and ran to the old farm house
I tore down the boards that covered the doors and windows
I used charcaol from the old fireplace
to smear a "Welcome Home Maria!"
on the front door

I made a telephone out of two rusty cans and a string
and placed one can carefully on the front porch

I closed the front door,
took the other can
and sat in dads old chair
.....waiting

I made sure to be quiet
Just like Pa said

I wanted to hear her small feet crunch through the gravel
and creak onto the porch.
So I could hear her little metallic voice ask
for "Just ONE more story Lee!"

I pressed my ears into the can
I was ready to press 12 years of bedtime stories into it too

But the gravel never crunched
And the porch never creaked

I leaned on the water damaged walls.
I imagined I could hear her say "Im right here"
And my avalanche came down without her

I cried into that can like Pickett cried
when he sent his boys across the field
whistling dixie, going to hell in a handbasket
I died the way Pickett died
When he learned all his liuetenants and commanders
were killed only fifty yards from the Union line

I left the house open
I didn't board up the windows or doors
I left the charcoal smeared across the decayed door
I put the cans and string telephone on the roof

Because my dad was right about some things

And wrong about others

Sometimes you SHOULDN'T lose your armies OR the war.
No matter what you hear
Even if you hear nothing

I know this because
when I travelled to New York with the Navy
many years later
I met one of the doctors
my sister had worked with
at a hospital

He told me she had died a few weeks or so
before the summer I saw her on the road
And to this day I am convinced
that it REALLY was my sister that came home that day
I think she took a few weeks to come back
because her suitcases were heavy,
filled with string and rusty cans
banging against her thighs

I am glad I saw her come back.

Doggy years arent any easier than human ones...

I had quite a few jobs after that
I was a fisherman in Vermont
I made ice cream and moonshine in Tennessee.
I built big Billboard signs for buisneses.
I was a cheap magic act in a shitty travelling circus
I was a navigator on a Navy ship in the Great Lakes
I was a typewriter salesman in Alabama

I think liked running moonshine the most though.

Or typewriters...

I fell in love with a very poor woman
who wouldnt buy a typewriter from me.

I asked why she wouldnt
thinking it was because they were hard times
for her and the rest of the country
But she said
"Because it wont fit in my luggage darling"

Nobody had ever called me darling before
or since. And nobody, I mean NOBODY
around there had money to gallavant around county.
Let alone the country

So, I asked her
to name three damn places
in the whole damn world
she'd need to take her damn luggage

And
She answered
"EVERYWHERE of course!"

Aint love Grand?
Like Hell it is!
Let me finish my story Jackass

Love is something you can be sure about.
And I like to be sure.

She said "Love has to be said with a sigh"
So we'd say "Love...ahhhh"

Seven months later we were married.

Nine months later
the doctor said it was cancer.

Love is impossible....

I remember where I was the day
of life sentences, and anvil heavy x-rays
The day every calendar in the world
ended in "6 months."
Maybe a year

I was 168 dog years old.
And I was the opposite of ready

When she started getting frail
I told her
"Everything will be ok."

Even though we both knew it wasnt true
It doesnt make me a liar.
It just a stubborn way of showing love.

Theres lots of ways to show that.
Im sure of it.

When her eyes became as dull
and as wide
as the Arctic circle
I knew she was going blind

So I learned to read Braille
And I taught her.

Id rush our trembling hands,
over the tiny bumps
that told her simple things

Ill tell you now,
If you ever want to appreciate
how beautiful a woman is
close your eyes
and read her body like Braille.

Softly

She'll think its weird at first
But we all have alot to learn
About what is beautiful
Especially from the blind.

It wasnt even half a human year before
The hospital became permanent

I never wandered the corridors
to kill time.
I couldnt even FIND time
And if I could
I would have shot it in the face
Repeatedly

We had to pass time
Even when there wasnt much left

We made the list of places we'd finally visit
when she got better.
It was called the EVERYWHERE LIST
Even though we both knew it should have been called
the Never never land list.

She liked to play a game called
"Count the number of times
Lee says "I LOVE YOU" in a day"

When she was conscious
I told her every two point five minutes

When she was asleep
I played my own game.
I would count the number of steps from my seat
to her bed. And make sure it was never more than three.

One
Two
Three

One Wednesday night
She squinted and mumbled for me
from her hospital bed

One
Two
Three

I kissed her forhead.
It was hot.

She said "Everywhere..."

She said "Love"
And sighed deeper than the Mariana trench

I said
"I know..."

My dad was right about some things....
Sometimes you just have to listen.

I ripped all the beeping cords off of her
and picked her up out of her bed
She didnt weigh anything.

I put her in a wheelchair
and rolled her out of there before anyone could stop me
I remember she looked like an avalanche in her hospital gown
tearing out of that sterile tomb like Loki

I helped her into our tiny car.

She smiled HUGE.

That night was like ANY other night
We had had hundreds before
We ate ice cream
We told jokes
And cracked up for a decade
We made love
We ached for a hundred extra years
We ached for a hundred extra days

We stayed awake talking and laughing
We thought we'd be awake all night

Awake for the rest of our lives....

But the spaces between her words grew longer
And all the film negatives of all the pictures we ever took
Were melting in their photo albums
She finally said "Im acheing...to hear you say it"

I thought of waking her to tell her .
But I thought that there would be another night.
There would always be another night
We had had hundreds before

ONNNNNNNNNNEEEE....
TWWWWWWWWWWOOOO....
THHHHRRRRRREEEE....

But there simply werent anymore nights
She died on a Thursday

She's been gone for a long time.
Since then Ive been counting the steps
to "EVERYWHERE of course!"
Since I knew, thats EXACTLY where she'd be

One
Two
Three

Four
Five
Six
All the way to infinity....

I remember my youth
And it bursts into a thousand colorful peices
I remember love.
And it makes me feel achey breaky
And I want to run backwards.
Fast.
I want the thousand dog years
to TICK TOCK their way back
ALL THE WAY BACK!

So I can tell he horses that they'll be fine.
And to just close their eyes.

So I can let the mountains thousand year secret
crack me in half!
So the flood funnels into me like a black hole

I would hold it in my warm guts,
and spit it out into my rusty can
So my sister could have
the heat of a fourth of July Fireworks display
Sitting in that can with her
on that freezing rooftop.

I want to go back to tell dad
that he never had to be
on the recieveing end of any cannons
to be my hero.

I want to un-invent his fever,
and also automobiles,
so I can let my sisters suit-cases
bang against my legs,
knowing whats inside them.

So we could have got home at the same time,
and tore apart the boards that said "We're coming back",
and wrote with big triumphant smoky smears "We ARE Back!"

I want to go back to selling typewriters over and over again,
so I can hear the fearlessness in her voice when she said "Everywhere!".

I want to go back and kiss her HARD,
because thats the ONLY way we ever kissed!

I want to run back to saying "Love" with sighs,
and trade our list for boat tickets.

I want to attach rockets to your wheelchair
and send you out of the hospital
glowing into the dark night like Sputnik.

I want to run back and eat ice cream with you.
ALLLLLLLLLL NIGHT

But most of all,

.....I want another night
Just like any other
To tell you what you want to hear
when you ache the most


My name is Lee.
I am almost 630 dog years old now

I am the opposite of young

Soon there simply wont be any more nights
to tell you,
that
LOVE IS BIG