We sat cross-legged and went around the circle answering the question: "If you could have a superpower what would it be?" No one liked these team-building exercises, everyone always lied. Malcolm wanted to become invisible. Christina wanted to fly. The same boring shit. Except when it was Dylan's turn he leaned forward and said, "I want to be able to make intangible things tangible." Dylan looked down at his hands. "So then I could touch intangible things and hold them in my hands," he said. "Like music, if I could make music tangible I would hold it in my trembling hands like this and I would kiss it. I'd kiss music because it has gotten me through some really tough shit. And hope, if I could make hope tangible, it would be this little tiny thing that you can barely see, like a mouse's tear. Do you think mice cry tears? But hope would be this little tiny thing and I would place it in my pocket because a Colonel who survived the Thousand Days' War once told me 'you can't eat hope, but it can sustain you.' And memories, I would try to cradle memories in my arms like a baby, but they would weigh much too much for me to lift off the ground, because memories are heavy. They're the heaviest things on earth, sometimes even heavier than the earth itself. And memories would fall through my arms like all the things I've never wanted to lose. Love, love would be a virus you don't need a microscope to see. Happiness would be someone I could take home to meet my mother. I could take happiness on a date to the movies, put my arm around her, and whisper into her ear that 'the world wouldn't be the same without you.'" Dylan's hands were shaking. "And solitude, solitude would be a man with a hurricane inside his head sitting in a room alone hunched over a computer at 1:37 am as the light-bulb hums inaudible melodies pretending he knows how to end a poem."

This for my mother, who taught me how to bring dinosaurs back to life. This is for my father, who taught me how to fight. This is for MJ, practicing his jump shot when nobody else was in the gym. This is for the lottery dreamers, the graveyard shift coffee-drinkers. This is for the students in Mexico who shouted, "They tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds!" This is for the canary in the coal mine, the cat with nine lives, the boy who defied the odds. This is for the underdog coming back to defeat the champs. The peasants rising up to dethrone the king. This is for the Mississippi delta blues. The shoe shiner who can't afford a new pair of shoes. This is for fireflies and summer nights, for hellos and no goodbyes, milkshakes and a side of fries. This is for the last tiger in the jungle, for Big Foot still looking for a friend. This is for the bullet missing Martin in Memphis, for the actress who continues to weep after the curtain has fallen. This is for rainy day lullabies This is not for you, sucker.

Let's get drunk on the moon, sing some love songs all out of tune. I'll brink the whiskey, you bring the beer, the universe is in the shape of a tear. Remember when Bobby went to jail? Sold my guitar to pay his bail? Remember when Sancho lost his mind? Lit his house on fire in the middle of the night? Lonely Mary had had enough she called 911 and asked for a hug. Remember when you broke my heart? Let me fall like a shooting star? This is my redemption song in my head it's 1,000 verses long. Let's go to the library of my mind, check out memories lost in time. Tommy got old and ran away, fought in the war for the USA, came back with a broken smile, now he sits in bars and cries for hours. Jenny's baby is all grown-up, she doesn't do her homework, doesn't give a fuck. I burn in water, I drown in flames, I'm the sun in the night, the moon in the day. Remember we ate ice cream in the park? Laid in the grass until after dark? This is my redemption song in my head it's 1,000 verses long. Let's spend the night on the sun, you grab your gun, we'll have some fun. Remember how Pablo won the lotto? Bought us beer and then disappeared? Malcolm got a job selling cars, everybody said, "he's gonna go far!" I am the hurricane, lightening child is my name. The clocks tick, the traffic slows, I like to dance in the middle of the road. Remember how you broke my heart? Let me fall like a shooting star? This is my redemption song in my head it's 1,000 verses long.

Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, between Black Rock and Pelican Cay, a shark fell in love with an anchovy. He would whisper sweet nothings into her ear like, "Are you tired? Because you've been swimming through my mind all day." Or, "Could you grab my fin so I can tell my friends I've been touched by an angel?" They passed their days gliding through the Gulf Stream together, fin holding fin. At night, they lay next to each other and gazed up at the stars from the Devil's Trench. The anchovy knew that the shark wasn't perfect. She knew that he had trouble controlling his impulses, especially at the scent of blood. But love is loving someone, accepting someone, for how fucked up they are. It's knowing their failures and their greatness and still loving them for their failures and their greatness. Despite their differences, the shark and the anchovy were in love. Their families felt differently about the relationship. The shark's father yelled, "How could you love those barbarians? Fish eat sea grass and live in reefs. They can barely swim!" The shark's mother had a breakdown when she heard about her son's feelings. "It's not supposed to be like this, it's not natural," she said in between sobs. "Sharks aren't supposed to love anchovies, they're supposed eat them." The anchovy's father had a fit when he found out his daughter was dating a shark. "Do you know for how many centuries sharks have been oppressing our kind?" he said. The anchovy's mother yelped in disbelief, "It's not supposed to be like this, it's not natural. Anchovies are supposed to hate sharks, not love them." After an evening of arguments and tears, the anchovy's father yelled in an outburst of rage, "My dear daughter, if I ever see you with that shark again, you, will be dead to me!" But the shark and the anchovy shared a love that could not be broken. It was the kind of love that had made kingdoms crumble to the ground on earth and thunder explode out of the heavens in the sky. One night, when the stars appeared especially bright from the Devil's Trench, the shark and the anchovy ran away together. And as time went by, the creatures of the ocean told the story of the shark and the anchovy to their children. But they forgot whom the story was about. Was it about a wolf and a sheep? A lion and a zebra? Two humans?

It is the year 2051 and today, in Elmhurst City Hospital in Queens, New York, a child was born with wings. The wings aren’t attractive though. The photo's been all over the news. They resemble bat wings more than bird wings, they're covered in hair instead of feathers, and they're much too enormous for a tiny body to control. But today, in Elmhurst City Hospital, Queens, New York, a child was born with wings. The father’s a taxi driver and when they interviewed him on the news he said he wasn’t surprised at all to learn that his kid was born with wings. “You don’t need to take care of a person,” he said, “You need to take care of their dreams.” He must have been reading too much Gabriel García Marquez or maybe somewhere along the way, between the oppression of the traffic light and the midnight drunks in the back seat, between the rush hour fury and the attempted robberies, he decided that dreams need something to lean on much more than people do.

I've had the daylights knocked out of me but never the fire. My religion is the little girl living down my street who saves up all her allowance to buy pets from the pet store just to set them free. My education was Van Gogh's ear. My motivation is my six-year-old cousin who says he wants to be a superhero when he grows up. My history is a two-year marriage with a fifty-year divorce. My home team is the child who asks his mother to stop smoking, please. My memories fade like snowmen in the summertime. And I am the descendant of people who turned lions into pussycats, wolves into dogs, humans into angels, children into soldiers, and I have become more of an insomniac than the man in the moon. When the coroners open up my body I hope a flock of butterflies flies out of my chest. And instead of a heart they find a tiny jazz drummer who plays along with the blues singer in my left lung and the tornado in my right. My collarbone will be the moustache of Salvador Dalí and I pray they don't find too much broken glass in my stomach. Instead of a brain, they'll find an aquarium in my cranium. Did I mention that my body is a prison cell without walls? Metaphors can set me free.

My father was drunk the night I was born and he stumbled into the hospital with bloodshot eyes and whiskey on his breath and he shouted to the nurses "please tell my son to read books," before he disappeared into the night forever. Stupid fucking father, don't you know that reading is a lonely business? That Shakespeare can't kiss you goodnight? That books might give you ideas, stories, an underdog's chance, but they don't protest when they're burned?

My friend Dan, he's the man, he sells kids weed out of the back of his van. My friend Roy is a gambling boy, he lost all his money and he thinks it's kinda funny. My friend Shea, she eats a Big Mac a day, she wouldn't have it any other way. My friend Tony is such a phony, he says he's got my back, but I know it's bologna. And I need to leave this town, yeah, I got to leave this town. My friend Bob is such a slob, he likes to collect junk and kiss his dog. My friend Lisa, she bakes me pizza, late at night, she asks me to meet her. My friend Gene is pretty mean, he starts fights in bars and causes a scene. My friend Dale is super pale, he stays in all day and he waits for the mail. And I need to leave this town, yeah, I got to leave this town.

Like a flower loves the sun, as I walk on the moon, I will continue to love you from afar, silently.

Did you hear about the onion that made a gangster cry? He chopped it in half and it refused to die, before the gangster knew it, there was a tear in his eye. As the onion began to cook, the gangster contemplated life. How he'd seen the moon smile in the middle of the night as he put a gun to a bald man's head and filled him with fright. Some years go fast and some seconds move slow, there are some things in this world that only the gangsters and the onions will ever know.

Kisses were privatized last month. It is the year 2032 and kisses are now owned and monopolized by United Cupid Inc., a transnational conglomerate that is the leading entrepreneur in the exploding multi-billion dollar kiss industry. One kiss now costs $1.50. A tongue kiss, making out, costs $2 per minute. If they catch you kissing without paying, they arrest you for burglary and the jails are becoming filled with repeat offenders. I knew our food, our medicine, our land, our water could be privatized, but never this, never our kisses. The junkies can't afford to kiss anymore. The people on the planet living on less than $2 a day need to save up for months just to kiss their partners. From Shanghai to Chicago, couples have started to blow kisses to each other. You see that a lot now. The parks and the alleyways of the world are filled with young people blowing kisses through the wind to each other. I wanted to write a protest poem, but the old lady with eight cats living in the apartment across the hall from me says I shouldn't lose sleep over all of this because I'm dating a rich white lady.