I thank, therefore I am. For being beautiful in my thoughts and in person, even with plywood along your walkway so no one can jump or throw cats at passing cars, thank you, Brooklyn Bridge. Thank you gravity for the moon and making my butt sag until it's almost one cheek bigger and for also meaning serious, as in the gravity of loss holds us more tenderly together. A poem can be anything and I thank the makers of language for that. A shoe that resembles Descartes. A shoe with a firecracker in it. A shoe with a foot in it connected to a face via a neck, torso, and leg, a face I’ll kiss thirty thousand more times before I die, that survived zits and antisemitism and the drool of sleep to be the face my face has gone steady with through the gales. Thank you light, I suppose, most of all. For being the best friend of the dark. For showing me where the last Oreo rolled away to. For weighing billions of tons I’m guessing if gathered and told by the doctor of light to hop on the scale but touching us and bunnies with the utmost care to crush nothing and tell the truth, the truth, the truth. What is that, the truth? People say money doesn’t grow on trees but then sell apples, say they love god but go to war, say the quiche was good when no one really likes quiche, do they? The truth is I miss the life I’m living while I’m living it, as if my death can’t wait its turn and wants a head start sniffing the too many flowers people will slaughter and lay at its feet. Thank you breath for keeping the balloon animal of my life afloat. I am an otter in the body of a squirrel in the body of a man who hangs out with dictionaries and claps deep in the auditorium of his skull every time the sun comes back to see if it can find its lost keys or whatever the hell motivates a star to hold its fury at just the right distance from cunnilingus and oceans to make it possible for me to end this poem and move on to breakfast: a small bowl of granola in milk from a cow who lives behind my house and lets me rub its head as if it’s a lamp full of wishes, half of which amount to more and all of which make me wonder if every language has a word for please.
If you’re on your phone, this image will show you the proper line breaks.
BOB HICOK’s latest book is Water Look Away (Copper Canyone Press, 2023).