I want a child,
a child I never had,
and I want to name it
Money.

I’ll lay Money
in a bed, snugged in warm
in cotton fleece, tease its eyes open
as soon as is safe
and know me as Father,

but I don’t want Money
to feel obligated to care for me
when I am helpless and old,
when I am laid in my own sick bed
and waiting to go.

I want a child and I will name it Money
and see it through its youth
and let it go, I am willing to let it be
a lesser part of my life
once it’s ready to go out
into the world.

I just want to know
I can care for it, enough
to take my joy in its presence
without dependence upon it.

You and your
big fat pretty face
go to the rink
to look for Ronnie
because he likes to go to the hockey game
and stand around drinking beers
and looking buff.  But he’s not there,
so you steal a stick from the bench
and break out the windows
on Ronnie’s girlfriend’s car
before leaving.  At the Four Seasons Club
you run into your brother
who’s holding Madagascar Haze
at fifteen a gram, you buy some
to take home with you
when you’re done with the White Russian
and your flirtation with the gap-toothed plumber
Ronnie used to room with before
he met that skank.  The DJ’s blasting
“Funkytown” and you yell, “I remember this”
at the top of your lungs in the plumber’s ear
while he palpates your ass and pulls you in
close, too close, he’s got wood, oh my God,
WOOD,
and you’re outta there,
it’s Friday night and it’s all right for something
but not that, and then Ronnie drives by
and you want to get in the car and chase him
but you dropped your keys somewhere
and you’re sitting in the parking lot now
crying and Plumber comes out to try
and help but you scratch his face
and your brother hits him and everyone’s
laughing and screaming, this is the way it always is,
you’ll go home alone and smoke yourself up
and pass out, this is
another night you’ll never tell your kids about
even when they’re old enough
to have nights like this, you hope they never
have nights like this but they will,
it’s the town that does it,
the nights always fall apart like this,
stuff gets broken all the time
but it always gets put back together
like it’s never been broken at all.

At night
our house chills down
more than you’d expect,
considering how warm it gets
at various points during the day.

Almost like the bodies chilling in earthquake ruins
after bloating and cooking in the dark.

Almost like the chilling hearts
of distant citizens impatient for things
to get back to normal.

Almost like the ice sculptures
chilling on partying cruise ships moored
north of the devastation, token supplies
having been offloaded.

Almost as chilly
as the wind blowing attention
to new crises, new celebrities,
old hobbies and old concerns.

As chilly, in fact, as the morning
soon to dawn where ravaged people
on the living room screen will be seen,
shrugged at, and turned off.

Dammit,
I’m sick of laying low.

Thinking of the flame around your head tonight —
I’m just putting it out there, even through tears:

Red,
let’s get
world-shiftingly drunk again
and shift the world.

Let’s dance again
to those songs that sounded old
the minute we wrote them.

Let’s get out there

and bop fantastic, weaving
in and out again, the old
schoolers telling the freshmen
how it is.  Let’s be wild
as sunflowers, rolling our vowels
like kegs into the sunset
and on through the night
that was always the sacred rebuke
to the next day, which we loved well
in its own way, though it never compared
to the moment.

Let’s pull the bourbon from the shelf
and suck it down,
imagine it tastes like kissing our best lovers
over and over, imagine
the angels not caring what we do,
the devils and imps not caring what we do,
the whole of unfair creation giving up
judgment for once,

because I’m sick of laying low,
waiting for something that I know won’t happen.
Sick of tears and grieving when the sky
is an offering every day, no matter its color.
Sick of dances undanced,
songs strangled on the back of my tongue,
sick of unworn costumes and feathers
that have forgotten flight…

You’re the flame on my dance card tonight,
just for tonight, and I want us to burn
the black back into the corners
and sear the excuses, the rationalizations,
leave them charred and discarded
and forgotten.

There’s a flame on my dance card tonight
that won’t be drowned in weeping,
won’t be quenched by time,
won’t be stopped by anything…
a flame that burns, snaps to the music,
flares and roars and opens up clearings
where the light can come in,

I want to dance again,
old school firedogs racing the burn,
giving no quarter to the rain up ahead.

So
let’s dance, Red;
let’s light up and

roll, Red,
for as long as we both can roll.