what I want

I’ve watched Keanu stop bullets with kung fu
too many times to not want to be famous.
Too often I’ve watched the out-takes
at the end of a Jackie Chan movie
that shit is for real y’all
to not know that amazing things
are, indeed, possible.
With enough practice.
Most recently I’ve related
to Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers, right before
he turns green and huge and tears apart bad guys,
he says (when asked how he can become angry so quickly)
“I’m always angry. It’s keeping it down that’s the hard part.”
Some days I wish I could skip the Jackie Chan discipline,
dedication, dislocated joints,
and just let my anger turn me huge and green
and tear things apart.
Tear apart things like the Grand Coulee Dam
and in the process restore the salmon run,
the Colville confederated tribes whose culture was that salmon run,
the broken lives that show up in our ER because it’s gone.
Tear apart things like Monsanto
and in the process bring back farming that isn’t actively destroying the planet
things like Coca Cola
and bring back clean water as public property and a human right
things like Walmart, Shell, the empires of the Koch brothers and Kemper Freeman,
and restore representative democracy and community and some last vestige of hope
for our planet.
I wonder if this poem will get the attention of the FBI.
Some days I want to be famous for channeling my anger to destroy bad things.
I want people to look past the mild-mannered family doctor
and see a simmering pot of rage just waiting to tear things apart.
But today
today I am angry over trivial things
little things
petty and avoidable things like wasting time online trying to decide
which superhero movie to watch in the precious time that LL’s parents watch the boys.
And so I walk down 45th and instead of reading the movie marquee
I walk into Open Books
and buy, for LL the love of my life,
a book of poetry by Mary Oliver.
Next year Mary Oliver will turn 80.
I open the book and read a poem called “What We Want.”
Then I don’t want so much to be famous.
I don’t want to stop bullets with kung fu.
I don’t want to be angry.
I just want to listen.
To observe nature, such as it is, such as is left of it, such as we are a part of it.
I just want to be a good husband and a good father
and as much as possible
to inspire my two little boys to make the world a better place
by doing so myself.
And if Monsanto and Coke and all the dams and prisons and jetski manufacturers
go by the wayside
in the process
well, that will be okay too.