Wish List

I wish humans had never gone to the moon.

This world has tenderized me. I am up to my ears --we all are--  in fairy dust and horseshit and monkeyshines and snake oil and sucker-punching meat robots.

I want to be stunned. I want experiences that leave me howling with pleasure and wonder at the abracadabrant possibilities of this world. I want to feel my heart swelling in my throat until I'm choking with happiness and gratitude, until at the bottom of the day I’m alone in the dark and reduced to hoarse, hysterical stuttering and  laughter.

I don’t want to be alone in the dark.

I want magic. I want to see things that make me doubt my eyes. I want to hear voices. I want the life that is left to me to be pure astonishment, to return me to the epistemological ground zero of the confused and awe-struck child.

I want animals to speak, and I want them to tell the truth.

I want an mp3 of the laughter of everyone I have ever loved.

I want to come home late one night to find my parents slow dancing in my living room to a Jo Stafford record.

I want to be the gun on the table in the first act.

I want to be the mysterious stranger arriving in an unfamiliar town with a sack full of magic corn and stories of fabulous, faraway places.

I want to be the troll who lived under the bridge and the wise old man on the mountain.

I want to be the boy who was raised by wolves.

I want to be the voice in the croaking bog that sings the furthest into the damp morning.

I want to be the voice that calls you back to this world.

I want to be the match that lights the candle.

I want to be the candle that carries the light down into the darkness.

I want to be the frosting on the cake and the writing on the wall and the message in the bottle and the goose that laid the golden egg.

I want to be the truth that sets you free.

I want to be the keeper of your secrets and the secret you can’t keep.

I want to be the road to riches or the road to ruin, depending on who is traveling along me, and I very much want passage along the road to ruin to be exclusively limited to garbage wrapped in skin.

I want to be the canary in the coalmine and the genie in the lantern and  the key that opens the mysterious door.

I want to be the 'Yes' that rises through the murk inside the Magic Eight Ball.

I want to be the first record you ever danced  to.

I want to be the pen that carries you gamely down the page on a night when you have no words of your own.

I want to get my knees dirty, to claw at the earth with my fingers, to feel the sun on my teeth.

I want to give it away, all of it.

I want it all to be a dream, a good one. I want to recognize that that's exactly what it is.

I want what I really want, what I've always wanted, and I want it bad. I want it more than I've ever wanted it.

(ADDITIONAL DESIRE HERE)

(Drawing by Wilson Zellar)