December 25, 1997

The purple, joie de vivre sky looked sick, and true,
if you were watching Agent J like I was,
you might think the sky had just spit him up.
I remember I was wearing a sweater,
which is probably what made it so cold
that day.

So there was Agent J, basking in the jazz hands
and backflips of the street lights,
jumping 10 feet 8 inches off the ground,
landing in a split next to the sandwich board men
who know that the world is ending
and UFOs are real.

UFOs are real. Agent J is a spaceman. That’s how come I know.

A chorus line of SDFs and bums sang the colors
of the rainbow, and supernovas,
and black holes, and J the spaceman,
ground control to Major J,
kept dancing down those Wednesday streets,
Agent J phone home.

The smell of dirt and sweat
And 20-20 hindsight crescendoed to a deafening
volume, louder than those whispers
you know are about you. But Agent J
just kicked and smiled
and twirled the little girls
lined up one by one.

It was at this point that Agent J,
the J-man,
dove off the Brooklyn Bridge
into the shiny star water below.
I think if I were upside-down
he would have been flying straight up,
into a moon made of purple joie de vivre

and cheese.