I woke up like
Aretha Franklin.
I said a little prayer
for you
and I do it
everyday.
I wish you didn’t need more prayers
than other people, but the world
is not a Technicolor university brochure
and some still wish
the first ten minutes were
all there was
to The Wizard of Oz.
I suffer from insomnia
or Diet Coke addiction
or maybe both.
It’s harder and harder to tell
as the years go by and my eyes look more
red and purple than blue.
So if you want to find me in the middle of the night
I’ll be lying on the couch by the glow of the idiot box
worrying about where you are,
how many more hours until I need to be awake,
and watching reruns of Bewitched.
The film crinkles on the screen in time with Samantha’s nose
and I’d laugh about it if I wasn’t so busy getting my heart broken
by Dick Sargent.
Good three in the morning, Dick Sargent.
I say to my love,
“You look an awful lot like him.”
Not in the face or anything.
He’s lankier and handsomer
and by God’s grace, he’s still alive.
And if I was Samantha
I would make it so that I could keep him alive forever
without big whirring machines and lines that stretch out the door
for a vampiric dream.
But I am not a witch
though I fell to my knees and begged for God or Hecate
to make me one.
I am not a witch and so I fear
that the network will bring the axe on him
like they did to
Dick Sargent.
I have nightmares that I am
Maria the Shark,
cradling him,
crying for him,
loving him.
I have nightmares where I scream
“DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM!”
and wake up sobbing and sweating because now I have hate
and I’ve always had hate for hate
but if someone tried to hate him that night
I don’t know what I would have done.
He is proof that God exists
because he is kind and he is good and he is beautiful
and I love him more than I’ve ever loved myself.
He is proof that God exists
and I guess some people are too scared
to know that the rest isn’t really silence
so they try to make it so
by firing Dick Sargent
and firing.
Good three in the morning, Dick Sargent.
My love looks an awful lot like you.
