Prayer to My Brother in the Sun
In nineteen ninety-three, with me sixteen,
you’re god, at least his priest, out on the lawn.
Your robes are Polo shorts and muscles full
of iron, and your eardrums shot by Guns
‘n Roses. Headphones, on their halo, pin
peroxide-golden spikes against your scalp,
and sacred Raybans plate your eyes with night
to shrink and twin the sun to stars of ice.
An alloy, sweat and molten Coppertone,
converts your face into a smelted mask,
the frown as proud as Terminator’s when
he walks through Armageddon, tan intact.
In fact, I think you’d be a Kennedy
if destiny had taste, and, if I had
my way, you’d stay outside, let sunset plate
your chest with all the gems that armored priests
of Exodus. You’ll melt tonight to dawn’s
zirconium and turquoise, shine like ice,
that summer diamond. Our suburban i-
con, shine as high as you can stand it. Blaze
away the night that blinds the windowpanes.
You’ll bind the moon into its nautilus
of thoughts. Stay out, and winter, when it comes,
will run into the heat wave that the songs
have promised. Comet, better yet, the best
Apollo spaceship made, you’ll rise by fire
and use the booster rockets in your booze
to flare into the stratosphere and tear
the ozone open. There, you’ll flare so bright,
the ultraviolet eye that radiates
on all of us will close. It won’t. I know.
I call you in to dinner, parents, prayer
too soon. You fly into a dozen years
of heat and hurt. Then, older, sober, paled
by God, you leave me cold. Amen. Come in.
