This is what I want: to be forever

twenty-two driving down the busiest intersection

half a barrel deep, belting Stevie Wonder

at the top of my lungs, shouting down yard signs

and hermetically-sealed lawns.

I need to be almost immortal

like every dead/broke jazz musician

who ever hawked a horn for mouthfuls of freedom.

Or alive enough to feel the weight of gravity,

ancestry, anything worth a second thought.

Late Saturday evening, raindrops sizzling across

the bullet shaped bay window, my pops and I sit

starring into the dark, crystal ball.

A late model record player leaves electrified music

drizzling from the cracks of our vaulted living room ceiling.

Across the hollow corridor, where my mother is glued

to the evening news, a woman talks about the public

school system and a village in Guam

where settlers compete to solve math problems

for the ultimate prize.

My dad looks up from his tilted glass of cognac, claims,

that’ll never happen here; not for a million years, 'cause

we’ve got hamburgers, baseball, apple pie, and Chevy.

I remind him not to forget religion and ecommerce.

He agrees with this statement, nods like it’s standard.

It is at this instant that we begin to understand

the strange plane between us; Father and son,

stuck at the root of this sticky slope wishing

to be nothing more than what we always were—

Father and son, content, aware, here.