Dead Men Talking

I don’t care
if he’s dead —
I want Samuel Beckett.
I want to keep him in my pocket.

I want them all — get me
Kerouac and Shaw, Hemingway
and Wilde, Adam Smith and Descartes,
John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham
(even mummified
as he is) — give them to me.

I want them all, all the dead
white male thinkers
who remade this world
in their images and left it to me.

Give them to me — I want
them, lust for them, I want them seething
in my pockets —

so I can pull them out
and kiss them on their cold lips
and beg for understanding
when I am unable to understand —

ask them what they were thinking
to leave me like this, at sea, twisting
in oily waves, gasping for breath
in clouds of cordite and radium,
drowned before breaking
the surface even once —

when I thought
if I loved them enough
they would open up
and tell me what I need to know.
Do you think I can yet learn to think
as a thinker thinks —
living a Western life
completely in my head?

I want to save the world.
If I can’t do it with them,
then maybe I can do it if I take them
with me, their icy bodies
swirling down to Neptune
with me, their
once upon a time best lover,
their former die-hard disciple, their
hope to be, wanna be
whiter than they are
candidate for perfect man.