Major Tom, I’ve known loneliness
like yours in outer space.
I’ve felt space
between myself and everyone
else, between myself and
myself even.
I eat buttered popcorn in the dark and stare
into other people’s dreams.
I hope you’ve got dazzling starlight
and color television far above the world.
Down here, Mom beat my older sister
with a curtain rod and smashed our TV
with a hammer, called it the idiot box
after that Twilight Zone episode
where little Anthony makes and kills
a three-headed guinea pig, wishes
his playmates into a cornfield, sets
a man on fire and everyone has to say,
That’s real good. It’s real good you done that.
My sisters and I walk on eggshells
around Mom, and Dad’s gone now.
He hopped into his VW Rabbit and onto the road.
His car knows which way to go—
far away from here.
He may as well be out in space—
he’s so far away.
Regret
is the piranha I’m not
old enough to keep as a pet,
but there it is, eating everything
else in the bowl,
and it looks at me like it wishes
it could sing a song about eating me
before eating me, but a fishbowl
is a window that lets everyone
see into you. Are aliens watching you,
Major Tom? Do you feel like
you belong to the darkness
now? Do you think I’m
an alien? Do you
miss the blue sky filled with birds
shaped like clouds and the smell
of burning from the paper factory
beside the freeway? Do you
miss your family or manual typewriters
or gangster movies or a time before
arthritis or the way a guitar
sounds as it smashes onstage
or the way meat smells
different each minute on the grill
or knowing whether your stocks
are soaring or crashing? Are you
soaring or crashing, Major Tom?
Inside every child, there’s a forest,
but mine’s on fire. My heartbeat
sounds like stampeding in my chest
but not fast enough. If you could
come down now,
where would you land?
How about my roof?
Sometimes I climb up there
to clean the gutters and to squint
at the stars until I think
I can see you seeing
my hands holding a homemade sign
that says Help!