Brando

Marlon Brando’s such a babe in Guys and Dolls,
it’s an ideal, makes you feel 
positively reverent, same as orange blossoms, 
the way they delicately ask to seduce 
the delicate insides of your nostrils. 
Or Pre-Raphaelite women, large, lovely, 
looking like they never need or want to speak, 
wearing nothing or wearing clothes 
made from fabric that ought to cover couches. 

When I was five I had cowboy boots, I had a hat,
I had chaps and a holster for my own tiny cap gun.
The gun was smooth and silver and gave me 
the bang and the odor without hassles 
of targets to hit or not hit. 
It was one of life’s truly useful things: 
It helped me change what was real 
into what I wanted to believe, 
like asking “Is that the Milky Way?” 
when you know it’s clouds, 
like letting margins be the places 
where we make notes and plans, 
draw question marks and stars. 

Now when what I believe gets too elegant, 
I remember Brando in Apocalypse Now, 
fat, angry, full of death; 
I remember a roof being patched, a street resurfaced,
the scent of orange blossoms assaulted, 
extinguished by the smell of hot tar.