The Never Normal

I am human,
keen with need.

From birth I discern an infant ability,
a higher order of helplessness:
my just-hatched hands redden & reach
for milk, warmth, a return to the womb

The open palm of desire,
it wants everything…

trucks & blocks, the training wheels gone;
park place, boardwalk – mine – with two hotels on each;
a year’s supply of bomb pops & bazooka joe.

wants everything

golden fairground frying dough, silver stapled stars,
the complete collected works of Everywriter;
watered gardens gifting greens, a son, albeit silent…

It wants soil soft as summer

tenderness.
a yielding bouquet, the feeling in my center
up against another
up against the wall
the kind of time that gets
away
so at the last I want
the strength to let you go
a month, a week, another day.

~ Italicized lines are lyrics from the song Further to Fly by Paul Simon