When you're dying to escape, sweet-eyes,
add some warm yellow and red,
put some fuzzy brown in it,
sugar,
and place it in the past.

If you're just another Woody,
begin with music, it's okay,
a hesitant boy
wishing, it's all right,
and couple of girls, both pretty.
And somewhere let there be dancing.
Streetlights.
Don't go shy now, pumpkin.

A man dreaming of the lovely. Imagine.
(Let a young man speak for his middle age. Let him
stammer and stare, to prove his innocence.)
Add Paris.

Or else begin with Paris, deep honey brown—
how many dreamers did it take
to color Paris? Who cares, someone or other
colored up Paris, and all we had to do was
go and visit, pull it on like
these blue jeans and messable haircut, put a French
accent on jazz.

The past has warmed things up for you—
streetlights blur things for poets
who insist on the future and feel
rubble in their shoes;
blue is for loss, they tell you, and lose it.
Shoot them.
Brick-red and bourbon-hued womby-dark
corners—smile, overdo it,
put your love there. You were dying. Now
call for a car of candied gold, let
its doors open and don't
ask where it's going.

Kiss me.