where I want to be

a mosque
a mosquito
a mountain
a molecule
an Earth
an electron
a quasar
a quark
a galaxy
gravity
an infinite greatness
an infinite smallness

where lies
the perfect size
the silver mean
the in-between?

a baby orangutan
in her mother's arms
a fireman pulling
a child from harm

a ninety-year old man
driving a thirty year old van
a future President
humming the soundtrack
to "Stop Making Sense"

the middle, the median
a modicuum of perfection
the thing that we search
the things that we learn

in the realm of sentient beings
a greater Home
suspended in wavy grace
a myth, a poem

dream of wrestling with God

I grabbed
His penis
I grabbed
God's
penis

I won't
deny
some degree
of homoeroticity
in my psychosexual
history
(yes, it is a strange
way to put it)
but it wasn't like that --

it was like
wrestling
with my best friend
when we were 12
right out of the shower
at his house
after swimming,
our laughter like
a fountain of water laughs,
its revelations
a constant surprise
to itself

and me
not believing
in a God
that innocent,
that kind

as kind as my best friend
who never laughed at
how I couldn't throw a baseball

but who
when he said he loved me,
I called a fag
and didn't mean it
in any way
other than with disdain

the bustle

we are separate, we are different and indifferent,
some of us blessed, some broke,
but loving, belligerent or unfeeling –
we are all the same

our bodies are all equal, all fertilizer
unshowered or covered in jewelry, make-up, cologne
carrying purses and fake personas
or funky trickster mojo with dirty clothes
we all bat our eyelashes as if
stunned at the bottom of a bank-building free-fall

the bustle,
the great, ballsy bong of downtown –
where homeless odors collide
with casino goers hubris

we are drunk on park benches in torn tennis-shoes
or tripping over our loafers on eight dollar night caps
nervous laughter and sleeping rage
work our mouths, vibrate the frames of our bodies

we don’t really know where we’re headed

and the glistening of the Terminal Tower
in red and blue
and the lights of stadiums
where little boys and little men nurse deep wounds
over chronic little losses

cannot outshine the shaky man with Bozo hair
drawing peace signs in chalk on the sidewalk on Public Square

he might tell us where we are headed,
his heart, a Universal router we cannot connect to
with our smart phones or our dumb Jonesing for
more and more human warmth
through less and less human interaction

yeah, he might tell us where we are headed

but we wouldn’t listen

giants

thought it would be a cool idea
to draw her
asleep
in her bed
after the stroke

this soon turned into --
an unflattering portrait of my mother

but I finished it
before throwing it out,
the wispy, white and charcoal gray hair
the narrow Jewish nose
with the long nostrils
drawn in red ink,
the only kind of pen
the nurse had

and what I found here
were memories --
of the things we had done
the way she had cared for me
how we had played our game
together

all that time,
never realizing
we are actually giants,
asleep,
dreaming ourselves
to be mother and son