Where I’ll Be Good

–Michael Ryan

Wanting leads to worse than oddity.

The bones creak like bamboo in wind,

and strain toward a better life outside the body,

the life anything has that isn’t human.

Feel the chair under you? What does it want?

Does lust bend it silly, like a rubber crutch?

Tell a tree about the silky clasp of cunt.

It won’t shift an inch. It won’t ache to touch.

Let me not cruise for teens in a red sports car,

or glare too long at what bubbles their clothes.

Let me never hustle file clerks in a bar.

Keep me from the beach when the hot wind blows.

If I must go mad, let it be dignified.

Lock me up where I’ll feel like wood,

where wanting won’t send me flopping outside,

where my bones will shut up, where I’ll be good.