When I look at you I think revolutionary thoughts
like that people go home to their houses and are happy
eating dinner with the family they’ve always wanted and want
nothing more. I imagine an irrational future for the first time
and it scares me like how the fighters on the screen hug each other
in tears after beating the shit out of each other just moments before
is the second most beautiful thing in the world
to sitting on this couch in this apartment that will not be yours
someday watching UFC fights, listening to you
tell me how before the moment of the fight
they watch hours and hours of videotapes
memorizing the movement of the other’s body
in relation to other bodies—I don’t say anything because to say
it’s like love would be too on the nose
and plenty of things can be like love anyway
like how I only like UFC when I watch it with you
like moving the head to meet the punch
when we learn it’s called slipping I say what a good word
no other word could ever be as good
for what they do I say there’s this Frank O’Hara poem
where he says the tide is like a rug
slipping out from under us and you look at me
and say is it about the ocean I love the ocean
I say I know that’s why I’m telling you even though that’s a lie
(I meant that loving you is like imagining how your fist
will move towards my face and moving with it so it still hurts
but hurts less or at least in a way I already know about)
but sometimes lies are more true than the truth
like how they say no one can die at Disneyland
because they shuttle the body out as fast as they can
before pronouncing them dead and you say so you’re saying
if I wanna be immortal I should just live in Disneyland? but no
your death certificate will just say that you died
just outside the borders of the happiest place on earth,
immortality is disappointing like that, you know, all that forever.
I’m thinking I’m like Disneyland. I’m thinking
about the stupid amusement park of my life and all the dead bodies
being rushed out of it who all paid for a ticket for the moment
at the top of the rollercoaster just before it goes down
believing it’s worth it to spend a day standing in lines to do it again—
before the ecstasy there is everything before and after
and I guess we just have to live with that
though some people are better at that than others;
I’m not, and I know it. At the end of the day
I keep playing slow music through the park
trying to convince everyone not to go, to make sure
they buy something they can show their friends
to prove they had a good time, knowing
eventually the gates must close so the cast can go home
to eat dinner with the family they’ve always wanted
and want nothing more—yes, I had forgotten
even the actors have real lives and I wanted that.
I wanted to go offstage. I wanted to take off my costume
and climb into bed, I didn’t want
to be a princess, only an actor playing a princess
who knows what her real voice sounds like
lighting up in the employee bathroom with her friends,
like WWE where everyone knows what’s gonna happen:
the first time we watched it I said what I don’t get is
why watch it if the outcome is already planned,
if the bell toll means the Undertaker is coming out
and it’s not even death just a guy in a ridiculous hat
and you said why watch anything at all
look at how much fun they’re having
look at how ridiculous they’re being
oh I would have a love
like a 309 pound man with a stupid stage name
climbing a barbed wire fence for no reason, a love
rehearsed a thousand times; they’re in on it,
everyone’s in on it, the way the audience loves them
is to pretend the stakes are high and the fight is real
and they know it’s not and pretend anyway
because really they don’t really know,
it’s still a real surprise when the bell tolls
even if you know who it means is coming out
and I get it now.
But there are times when I miss the seriousness
of that time I was five and another kid
beat me up on the playground. I didn’t know why
he did what he did but he did it. I don’t know
if he knew why either. There was so much I didn’t know
like if my front teeth would ever grow back
if I would ever get up off the pavement
if I died how long it would take
my mom to find me if anything would ever
be so serious as this and then I got up and learned
that these things happen to people
everywhere and all the time and even for fun
and actually people have been declared dead
in Disneyland. I don’t know where that legend started
but maybe it sounded so beautiful
people believed it was true—at least I did until
I looked it up to write this poem. I looked up so many stupid things
like how much the Undertaker weighs
because I wanted to tell the truth about us
and didn’t know where to start
like that one Christmas I didn’t come home
and my dad left me a voicemail I never opened
til two years later I finally listened to the twenty three seconds
of silence before he cleared his throat
and said It is Christmas and then
You’re not here and even in that moment
that I opened it only one of those things was true;
maybe even both of them weren’t true,
you know, who’s to say where here is,
but I know what he meant. Do you know what I mean?
I mean that I said this poem happened in a dream
so that I could make your voice say all the things
I wanted it to say. I mean in UFC if you kill a man
you can’t be held legally responsible.
Sure, you’ll have to live with that for
the rest of your life, there’s no getting around that,
but when you get in the ring you sign away your life
and your family and all your dinners together ever after
for the rush of a fist to the face of a mouth so full of the reason
you are alive and maybe you wanted
to remember a time when you wanted nothing
more than to never get up again
from the pavement where your small naked life
was pressed into the ground by another kid
or the bed the first time we slept in it together
and I see it now I see that these are the same thing
there is all this blood in my mouth and nowhere to put it
but there isn’t any blood, that’s a lie, I’m sitting in my room
and you’re not here and if I ever finish this poem
and if you ever read it then both of those things will be a lie too
and I just want to say one true thing I know to end it
but it’s private like death like the inside of the mouth
like your handwriting like the time I told you I had a secret
but I couldn’t tell you what it was only that it was there
and sitting in that room with us like the one person in the audience
smiling, watching us prove to each other
how many past lives we’ve spent learning about each other
to arrive at this moment, to duke it out in the ring.