A Little Spring Fever

I LIKE MY STRAWBERRIES A LITTLE BITTER

and I like Salted Hot Chocolate.
I like yogurt pretzels,
fried Oreos and fried bananas, and
cherubs with horns.

I like treating hangovers with orange juice and a cigarette,
treating a chemical imbalance with chemicals, and
treating a cold with Sudafed, Robitussin, and leftover antibiotics.

I like my vodka with a little caviar.
I like pepper on everything, and salt on nothing.
I like Anne Sexton and Charles Baudelaire.
I like unscented soap.

I like a summer breeze, Indian summers,
wearing black on a sunny day, and
watching the shadows cast through the blinds as
the sun goes down.

I like taking pictures of trash on the street.
The stripper taking care of 3 fatherless children.
The gay soldier.
The man who murders his wife’s killer.
Junkies and their sweet tooth.

And I like 95th and Park’s corner bum,
the doorman who’s also the drug dealer,
and the heroin addict who lives in apartment 4C.

I like the clown fish that lives amidst the
protection of the sea anemone.
I welcome the tape worm and the ear wig.

I like kinky sex, fucking in all the fun positions, and when
pretty girls wear dark nail polish.

I love the lovers who can’t make it work,
who know their time is limited, who love each other no less,
and who abandon each other.

I also like the cranked up purse snatcher
on his third probation and the alcoholic cop
chasing him down,
paid for in full by you.
I like that it’s easier to own a gun than
buy health insurance, that
it’s easier for a gay man to join the army than
marry the man he loves.

I’d like to thank the NRA, the Christian Right, and the Confederacy.

I like unaccounted-for nuclear warheads,
shell-shocked veterans without Medicaid, and
the Private who comes home to his new baby with one less leg.

I like religions that are worth more than large corporations,
that protect perverted clergymen, deny the fruits of Science, and promote
monotheistic Gods with a masochistic agenda.

I like Democracy with Fascist overtones.

I like walking with blisters on my heals, eating with a burnt tongue,
smoking with bronchitis, and digging the dirt out from under my nails.
I like sleeping without dreaming, Tequila breath, and
getting shocked when I flip a light.

And sometimes I stare directly at the moon,
filling up with the itch of Spring’s pollen,
dissonant music and a healthy bit of nonsense.