Melted Plastic

The children have grown—

now they cultivate anxiety like hope,
like a Sunday afternoon that passes in a puff of pot smoke 
rising over a highbacked chair while you beam,

as impetuous as the sun. I have become 
like the high priest of a cult anticipating Atlantis, 
El Dorado, Moscow (Idaho), etc.

You respond with a simile:

“You seem like Nocturne No. 2 
in E-Flat Major, 
Op. 9 No. 2. You’re pretentious.”

You’re sentimental. Oh—

Did you hear the news this morning?
    The world was saved.
Hail to the chief.
    God save the king.
    That son of a bitch wants me dead—

it’s just—
    “It’s just castles burning.” 

like the kitchen
    where I learned I can’t cook from another room,
    where you taught me how to listen before leaping into 
    avalanches and pyroclastic flows and other euphemisms for angry sex.

You lean forward, pick up a book and a cigarette.
You lean back and you smoke and tell me to breathe.
You beam.

“Did you see the news today?
    They wanted to know if there was a man on the moon.
    So they sent a mission and it was doomed.”

What are you reading?

You close your book. In your right hand you hold your cigarette in your fingertips. It looks like a chimney.
You hold up a fist with your right.

“So, this is you.” You shake the cigarette, take a drag, then shake your fist: “And this is me.”
You put both hands on the book. “And this is where art begins.”

I think I know what you mean. I think you mean you’re tired and

Did you see the news today?
    “That girl sold a billion albums.”

I was thinking about Sunday afternoons,
    about how they’re fundamentally lies,
                                           fundamentally yesterday.

You put out your cigarette. You pick up your book. 
You beam.