Independence day

There’s a battleship parked in the river,
reenacting open doors, open arms, then open fire.
There are mushroom clouds and machine-gunned copters
descending in the snap crackle pop fizzle of the fireworks
as they blast into the night air breathed in by
innumerable passengers screaming “We Are Number One.”

Independence Day, our freedom is won,
to choose our own way, when to go, what’s to come.
But with each tie we break, there is sacrifice.
How many lives will it take? How many loves just must die?

There’s a man I just met; he hasn’t kissed me yet.
He reminds me of someone else, only better.
But I’m made out of wax, so easy to impress.
I melting too fast, dripping into your lips?
Because all my heroes have turned human this year,
slinking ‘round pool tables, sinking into unfabled stupors,
whispering in the night air or into some girl’s hair:
“I Number One.”

There’s a battleship parked in the Charles River,
Shooting off fireworks that light up the world,
then fall in the water.
My love’s next to me, head full of the next century
and wondering whether there’ll be a wedding tomorrow.
And the secret smoke signals in the aftermath of gunpowder
seem the most significant indication of what’s to come.