I had a future in the dark.
At Putt-Putt Mini Golf, Arcade and Recreation Park,
I stood up and twitched as if in labs’ fume hoods,
divorced, like other seventh-graders’ parents,
both from evil and from good.
I had to stop to pee, pull up my pants,
or unpick grit from a trackball.
Some games relied, like social life, on patterns:
remember each action and its consequence
and you would never get killed, or fail, or fall.
Others demanded adrenalin, norepinephrine,
alertness fit for national defense.
At home, I kept trying and failing to play
piano parts for “Roundabout” and “Long Distance Runaround,”
whose singer’s futuristic poise, high A
and strenuous façade of confidence
seemed to mean he belonged to the heavens, where there would be
no difference between the voices of girls and men.
I wanted to sing about c, about optimization,
about hypergolic propellants and hydrazine,
the histories of rocketry and electricity
from amber to Goddard by way of Leyden jars.
My panoply of inappropriate postures
included the extreme slouch and the backward lean,
accomplished out of overcompensation
and a wish to look as if I were watching the stars.