JBMulligan

to want and to have
 
I want a life to love you,
and a life to listen to music,
and a life to read,
 
and a life for my children,
and a life to write.
 
I want a life
to understand
football, baseball,
soccer, hockey,
all their intricate
collisions and escapes.
 
I want one life
for each of those sports.
 
Every wine that is or was
has to fit into this one
cracked and tarnished cup....
 
and I find that I want
the life I have:
all of these segments
of the world I'll leave,
sweet and savory,
salt and bitter,
in wild blossom
on an aging tongue.
 
This is why we need each other:
too much world to taste
for one flash of mouth,
flare and crackle
in a darkening sky.
 


JBMulligan has published more than 1100 poems and stories in various magazines over the past 45 years, and has had two chapbooks: The Stations of the Cross and THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS, as well as 2 e-books: The City of Now and Then, and A Book of Psalms (a loose translation). He has appeared in more than a dozen anthologies, and was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize anthology.