Lights On/Lights Off

Poem for Round 5--Lights On/Lights Off for Slam '04

I used to play
red-light green-light stop
when I was a wiry kid
maybe, even a bad kid
gurgling juices
catapulting my senses
into firefly summers,
caterpillar autumns.
Take my place, I say,
to the children.
I must vomit up the
remains of the day,
regurgitating echoes of
headlights.

Lying in the grass
laughing on our backs,
using esp to conjure up
a big league baseball game,
it was me, ripshod with a
cap on turned around
backwards.
Again, it was Emmett's
second wife who quietly
loved Frisbee
in the seaside days of
his daughter's youth.
I watch him slide away
making love to the geeks
with a guitar strapped
to his umbilical cord.
He's in love,
when the lights go off,
you may dance now,
like you never knew he
existed.