Someday, I'll love Ocean Vuong

[Bouvre]

Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.

[Bouvre]

Make a Law So That the Spine Remembers Wings

 

So that the truant boy may go steady with the State,

So that in his spine a memory of wings

Will make his shoulders tense & bend

Like a thing already flown

When the bracelets of another school of love

Are fastened to his wrists,

Make a law that doesn’t have to wait

Long until someone comes along to break it.

 

So that in jail he will have the time to read

How the king was beheaded & the hawk that rode

The king’s wrist died of a common cold,

And learn that chivalry persists,

And what first felt like an insult to the flesh

Was the blank ‘o’ of love.

Put the fun back into punishment.

Make a law that loves the one who breaks it.

 

So that no empty court will make a  judge recall

Ice fishing on some overcast bay,

Shivering in the cold beside his father, it ought

To be an interesting law,

The kind of thing that no one can obey,

A law that whispers “Break me.”

Let the crows roost & caw.

A good judge is an example to us all.

 

So that the patrolman can still whistle

“The Yellow Rose of Texas” through his teeth

And even show some faint gesture of respect

While he cuffs the suspect,

Not ungently, & says things like ok,

That’s it, relax,

It’ll go better for you if you don’t resist,

Lean back just a little, against me.

 

-Larry Levis

[Bouvre]

Katy
Frank O’Hara

They say I mope too much
but really I’m loudly dancing.
I eat paper. It’s good for my bones.
I play the piano pedal. I dance,
I am never quiet, I mean silent.
Some day I’ll love Frank O’Hara.
I think I’ll be alone for a little while.

[Mortir]

Ocean's 11 was my favorite I like the original the most.