Shrink Wrap

Can’t get these western seventies teenage clothes off.

I started as a twitchy witless newborn rat pup

thrilled with the nipple and milk—willingly, forthwith,

I slipped the Tangerine Dream concert T-shirt

over my skinniness, tried the wide white belt.

Tried Tang. Tried my new heart, inscrutable

as calculus and obstinately blue, not

as you’d notice. I was pink-skinned from pudding

and meatloaf, I counted down to liftoff,

counted down the hits, was too young

to be a jungle grunt on his stomach in the mud.

I’d like to pay for that now, pay for the summers—

glad endless meadows of television—pay

for my paltry safe American belated boy life.

Bobby Kennedy didn’t hurt me. Nixon didn’t.

Lynn did, when she leaned her head against Peter’s

at the pencil sharpener. Lennon did, when his skin

let the bullets in. I knew then I could weep

for a stranger. Or my records. Otherwise—and what

is the penance for this?—I lay on a raft and drifted

across the lake of myself, little lidless blind eye.

At this late date, what is mine to offer in payment

for such debt? Steely Dan’s second album, perhaps?

Never played. Mint. Original shrink wrap.