What I Want

What I Want


for my marriage 1996-2000


I want a good night's sleep.
I want to get up without feeling
that to waken is to plunge
through a trap door.

I want to ride my motorcycle
in late spring through the Elysian Fields
of the Rocky Mountains

and lie once more with Cecelia
in the summer of 1985
on a blanket in the backyard of our house

in Denver and watch the clouds expand.
And it would be great to see my mother
alive again, at the stove, frying a pan of noodles

into that peculiar carbonized disk
that has never been replicated.
I would like for my ex-wife to get leprosy,
her beauty falling away in little chunks

to the disgust of everyone in the chic cafe
where she exercises her gift
for doing absolutely nothing.


George Bilgere
Posted from Billy Collins book 180 SILLY POEMS.