I’m looking for dynamite, I think.
When I go, I’m not drowning;
no long, slow pulls of oxygen out of me—
just a quick
boom!
and it’s done.
That’s how I’ll save the day.
When Tony Stark said, “I am Iron Man,”
I knew how I wanted to go.
(Is that an inappropriate reaction?)
When we were children,
we’d run our fingers through the flame of a candle.
If you do it fast enough it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t damage.
That’s not me.
Because if you touch me,
you’ll get 100 volts direct to the heart,
you’ll find that I’m a dirty bomb,
radioactive,
brilliantly yellow
TOXIC!
DO NOT APPROACH!
signs
obvious and bright as bottled sunshine.
I pass the time another day another drug another dream
of splat! on the sidewalk.
Another lesson in self-defusing. Self-detruding.
Self delusion.
Can you smell the ozone?
Do you know what it means?
What will happen when we touch,
when we fall?
If I even give us a chance.
I won’t need to; you’ll learn soon enough.
I don’t need someone whose scars match mine.
I don’t need more confirmation of the big bad monsters
that can turn anyone into a natural disaster, and it was just
by some sick snarl of fate that they chose us to burn,
because despite it all we’re neither of us the type to surrender;
no: we grasp greedily at the ellipsis, no idea how long
the pause is going to be before that unknown new sentence.
We’ll meet just the once
before we become collateral damage.
Maybe just long to reach for each other’s hands
and possibly even intertwine our fingers.
That’s when I’ll be the hero who rides the nuke up into the sky
and even though we’re both going to die,
Hemingway might think that the kind of tragic that’s actually a bit beautiful.
both the other hero and I,
An alcoholic misogynist, sure,
there is someone
who makes the same
impulsive, insane choice
as me,
but I think he might have been right this time.
and eager,
trembling,
together,
we
go—