don’t you ever just wanna be Luke Skywalker?
it’s twenty minutes into Return of the Jedi when through light into darkness Luke appears
          in Jabba’s palace,
          all cloak and face unseen, that anonymous, subtle, audience-has-no-trouble-knowing shadow.
you think, ‘it’s Luke!’
(and you don’t think, ‘fifteen minutes ago, Darth Vader came through the dark of space
          into the light of the second Death Star,
          all mask impenetrable and face unknowable,
          so why must Luke fall into these footsteps, reach his fingertips up as if to strangle?’)
at Jabba’s throne,
          he holds his hands clasped like he knows what he’s doing, so maybe you think,
          ‘if I knew what I were doing, I’d clasp my hands like that.’
at Jabba’s throne
          he opens his mouth and speaks like he knows what he’s saying, or at least
          he’s very good pretending, and his blue eyes are lightsaber hand-shorn,
          Obi-Wan dead and slain, cloud-ice-and-vacuum calm, so maybe you think,
          ‘he must know what he’s doing.’
(you try not to think through all her anger built into a blank-faced un-scowl, ‘Carrie Fisher
          lived through this, and it probably wasn’t the worst bullshit she survived, but
          if I could go back in time, I’d tell George Lucas where he can put that bikini and that chain.’
but you do think, ‘God, I miss Carrie.’)
he tells Jabba, ‘Profit or be destroyed,’
and even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing and even if you haven’t thought it yet, maybe
          now you do:
 
Things Have Changed.
(Mark has changed, too, and it might just be me, but there’s a mystique about his nose and
          a mystery about crashing and living and carrying that life and memory on your face.)
 
he tells Jabba, ‘Do not underestimate my powers,’
and you know
Luke isn’t the moisture farmboy, blue milk, pulls up into Mos Eisley in the speeder
          his uncle bought him (it was actually just his uncle’s speeder),
          ‘never got to go to Tosche Station to pick up those power converters’ nobody
          he didn’t have time to appreciate he was.
because even if Lucas wants you to forget, you can’t forget the music that Williams used
          to wound you when Luke’s home and family were black smoke on the white sand of Tatooine,
and now Luke, himself the black smoke on Tatooine,
          is younger than i am and dressed like he knows,
          really knows,
          that Anakin Skywalker is his father,
and I wish for him that white sand back, the long two-sun dawn of a galaxy whose weight
          he doesn’t yet bear on his shoulders.