"what i want"

"what i want"
a fiery musing of the craft by jake kilroy.

a torrent,
an endless torrent,
an endless torrent of wisdom, heartache, showmanship,
truth, beauty, laughter, wit, adventure and romance
is what it would take to give me what i want to give.
somewhere in the hollow corridors of my bones,
there is a priest leading an unruly mob of writers.
and though i find my heart in no church's lost and found,
i can respect anybody with a generous soul and humble clothes.

brimstone can be the broken artist's paint can fuel,
as i tried in teenage cheap shots of self-medication
with aspirin and sleeping pills, like a sheep in wolf's clothing.
but, without surprise, it was never enough
to become the wisecracking junkie loser prodigy goof
that every idiot 11th grader wants to be after
reading one book by an expatriate.

still, the wind bellows through me like a cavern,
rock guts being shifted by a bloody sea,
tucked under sky blue skin,
all waiting for a better metaphor of a rowboat.

so i wonder if the great fire of mankind's spectacular history
should burn cave art into the shallowest curves of my grace,
to finally fill me with what i beg of most from my body and spirit,
two wild cards shuffled into the cheater's deck in a local parlor,
as i call writing the greatest illusion of sleight of hand in the west,
a mere tool, trade or craft to give me what i want.

and so i want to drain ink from the great well of human sadness
and put it to the pages of history and conquer nobility.
i want volumes of the pitiful rage
that lurks in the alleyways of every man.
i want shelves of the desperate uncertainty
that hides in the creaks of every woman.
i want the great american dream shoved into a bag.
i want the well drink orders of our country's most hopeless authors.
i want the clarity that comes with an ego,
and then i want to smash it against a rock,
like a monkey with darwin's bones in his grasp.

i want the truth that comes with quiet moments.
i want the sounds that come with anxiety.
i want the racket of dinner party conversation,
so i can bottle it and sell it the god
that invented loneliness.

i want women, not girls.
i want heroes, not men.

i want to stop writing the pithy observations
of a well-meaning american twenty-something.
i want to stop writing the ins and outs
of daily life as seen from a slowing car.
i want to stop having epiphanies in cafes
and not in the great throws of americana.
i want to stop writing poem after poem
and start writing epic after epic.