Yesterday I started zooming around Alex Lemon’s 2014 poetry collection The Wish Book. The first section gives a funny and exacting glimpse into the intimacies of fatherhood. Other than the lines “I woke up with good vibes, thinking/ Today was still going to be/ A good day” & “His shallow breathes/ Into me as he rocks/ A clockwise circle, eyelids tremoring/ with white-hot dreams” my favorite poem (so far) from The Wish Book was “Ghost Rock.”
Oh there are so many
Mixed signals in this life —
this way, highway, that
Half, no way, not even
Halfway. The next day
Is all Beep. Bop. Boop.
Can you hear me
Now, Motherfucker?
But you & I are both lost,
O so lost. At night, God,
Or some other blowhard,
Whispered in my dreams,
if you love danger you’ll die
By it, so I stopped playing tag
with bottle rockets & Roman
Candles. The fourth-story
Window was no longer an option
On the list of things I want
To leap out of before I die.
But I can’t help it — I had to
Smash through the sliding
Door & pose like the Heisman
Trophy to show all the people
At my birthday party that glass
& I are pretty much the same
Thing. It’s made me think
About it a bit more. Both Billy Joel & Iron Maiden —
Even that one-armed drummer
From Def Leppard–say only
The good die young, right?
So, what about being a bit
Of both? Containing more
Than they want me to?
I know, I know, who do I
Think I am? I can hardly
Fathom the one thing I want
To know: when I flatten a hand
against my sleeping boy’s belly
Why do I feel a tiny paradise howling
Through my ribs? The way we fawn over
The untarnished beauty of skin
Is precious & cancerous, I suppose.
What is he, but a pulsing sack
Of wheeze? Help me, please.
Tell me, please. I will beg.
What is this rough magic
That fills me, this blaze
That keeps pushing us on?