Mike Young

GIGGLE OR STOP IT
for C

I will, of course, be there for whatever.
But only if I'm so famous I can't be held
against myself. My sense of humor in
real life is like the street person who
convinced you to give him money after
he moonwalked explicitly into your heart,
I mean tripped on a pigeon, I mean off the
pier to float above the invisible seals of
thirty-nine obligations, where we steal those
yachts and stand on our decks in bathrobes
trying not to acknowledge the In-And-Out
neon or the other quite entirely, quietly,
like trying to erase the word you from all
promotional material. We never did see
Laundromat Jesus or those tinfoil shoes
that weather divine since they would be
lying anyway, which is another way to say
trying too hard. "Let's ride the BART to the
airport," you said. "Then what?" "Germany."
Bravery's a lot easier under your ushanka.
Push the option on me to stop the orbit I take
around the tiny dwarfs of preoccupation.
Which sounds like a big halve-the-tides-via-
eye-games, but it's really just a need for an
alternate light source. Really I just want to be
quiet for a little while inside your quiet too.

Mike Young is the author of We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough (PGP 2010) and the chapbook MC Oroville's Answering Machine (Transmission Press 2009). He co-edits NOÖ Journal and Magic Helicopter Press. Visit him online at http://mikeayoung.blogspot.com/ and links to his published work at http://mike.noojournal.com/. He very much swoons over the company of carrot cakes.