I Want to Have Lunch

I want to have lunch with a red-lipped girl
and make her smile,
To call her the flesh of my flesh
and hold her hand without guilt or fear.

I want to make speeches
to the religious despisers of culture,
To turn the world of my youth on its head
with Marcus’s words and Immanuel’s thoughts.

I want to obliterate every aesthetic fence
with the reckless winds of my imagination,
To send the rusty shreds of yesterday’s art
flying in every direction.

Yet I’m scared that I’ll end up like
one of those crispy, shriveled-up worms
That line the sidewalks in summertime, that the sun
executes for the crime of trying-to-go-somewhere;

So help me bear my cross
as I look to Yours,
Help me to lose my life
as you give me Yours,
And help me to love You more than
my mother and father and sisters and brothers.
For if I desire, or ponder, or change, or create,
but don’t have love,
I have become the sound of rubber shoe soles in Walmart on a rainy day.