I never wanted to be an astronaut, suffocated
by thought: all that tethers a man to ship is ingenuity
and wiring.
        Never a doctor, for all the skin
I’ve split open, each scar’s lip chatter
a permanent marker of foolishness:
        How I kicked my way out of brotherhood
fights; lifted more than I should to impress
all those beautiful girls who valued me more
as a good listener, because I could repeat back
like a tape recorder, the important phrases.
How I wanted to be Indiana Jones, his whole cowboy-
professor balancing act — to ruggedly flex my intellect —
tripping over Australopithecus and patriarchal society
in bar conversations, house warming parties
and baby showers.
        You’re unavoidable, I hear an old lady
on the train whisper: like fire once it realizes
it can breathe, you prey on the world, leave us all
self-described martyrs in our own ashes.
        By now, I should be loudly objecting
to the needling pleas of aunts who still believe
I want to go to law school. That I should forget
about writing a book and be happy
correcting the mixing of past and present tense;
suggesting changes in the vagaries of somethings
and someones in the midnight scripts of adrenaline-
rushed youth, their worlds half constructed
in night’s silent race with dawn.
        Raised fatherless and slight, uncles
want me to roughen my pretty hands, deaden
a few layers at work in the same daily dark
they live — await factory downsizes in drinking
clubs named after better animals than man,
where it’s all gamble on football and gobble
the remnants from cracked peanut shells
piling in glass cigarette trays.