1.
Does Morrissey even want children like me —
Bruised feet, lacking finances to bear my own –,
Or only “succès éclatant”? Morrissey loves misery
As much as any other cubist clown who grew up fat
In a council house, but he simply cannot stomach
My rendition of “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.”
A voice I fear to recognize rings “Moz,” or “this is,”
Or “is this, Morris? See…” I fib. “Steered clear of the club
Tonight because I felt the Angel of Death nearby.”
Had I the right to an imaginary chaperone or must I remain
A lost pilot? No Lowell. No Berryman. No Morrissey.
Not even poor Harry Smith. I feel like a stump
With no vines growing around it.
2.
A moment ago I was 21, and not to be addressed.
Innocent about The Smiths, about the anger behind
Ennui, about the power of ironizing midnight calls
From mom with apologies for placing me in a parsonage.
Yes, I prattled on about language. About how its absence
Clinched our failure to unlatch the cemetery gate to the club
But never did I plan to merely glimpse the radiant elderly faun.
I aspired to be the one quaffing grappa and no-name champagne
With an acquaintance reminiscent of a defrocked Spanish
Jesuit who assumed himself a secular saint because acquitted.
3.
Regardless of the years.
Regardless of the knowledge
Of Wilde, Keats, and Yeats,
Of Belloc, Betjeman, and Stevie Smith,
We can’t get in to the club
Without proper i.d. It is just that simple and O
One more thing. I misheard:
When Morrissey introduced himself to me
In 1983 in “How Soon is Now?,”
I heard him say, “I am the sun and the air.”
At 61, I must unequivocally admit
Morrissey meant, “I am the son and the heir.”