Suspension of Disbelief with Princess Leia

(Flowers for Alderaan)

I wanna date for Star Wars:

I wanna take a girl to the movies

an old-fashioned girl just like Princess Leia

pick her up Saturday sundown sharp and pin

her a white corsage lacy to her tacky white gown

buy her popcorn and Coke product and a box of Gummi Bears

if that's her bent, red red Gummi Bears to paint her pouty mouth

sit next to her as the lights go down to yellow cataracts listening

to Princess Leia suck and squish red Gummi Bears

between her pink tongue and great white teeth, watching

the trailers for summer blockbusters but not really

watching Her

watching her so far out of the corner of my eye it hurts

it hurts to watch her watch the Coming Attractions

imagining I'm a bloody red Gummi Bear stuck to a back molar

in Princess Leia's bridgework and she's trying me

prying me with the tip of her red red tongue

sucking cold conditioned air over her great white teeth

and as we wrestle over the marginal armrest

I'm a liquid sugar animal cherry syrup sweet

dissolving in her bloodstream with a rush!

I wanna date for Star Wars

I wanna lean back in relative flame-retardant comfort

my arm around a Gatsby-girl just like Princess Leia

making her entrance in the first reel unencumbered

by raggedy baggage or lugs of old lovers

my friends all telling me A girl like that

ain't nothin' but trouble

a girl like that is out of your league

pay no attention, lean over and catch a clean whiff of Prell

over the chalky smell of my deodorized underarm plotting

the perfect opportunity to make my Big Move

reach up real casual barely brushing the flume of her ear

and accidentally-on-purpose

dishevel her hair

at long last release her hair from those mortal coils

I want one hundred twenty-five minutes alone

with Princess Leia in a cozy detention cell

quietly unraveling her hair

O what I wouldn't give to be Darth Vader

with a tube of Clairol running

my gloved fingers through Princess Leia's lifelike hair!

I wanna Date for Star Wars

I wanna get to first base with

a longago faraway gal just like Princess Leia

stark raving kiss her right in the middle of her rebellion

with cries of Focus! Carrie! Fisher! Fire! in a crowded theater

enraptured by the delicate cuticle of her amnesty

nourished on her hollow sharks of promise

kiss her silver by the light of a flickety moon

unafraid of gravity unafraid of lipbalm unafraid of hesitation

unafraid

but I am afraid, and I can't maintain suspension of disbelief

there's always some sordid distracting thing:

a cough, or sneeze, some body getting up to go to the can

O my beard protests my beard hesitates

her lips turn silver

her eyes all silver

her skin silver

Princess, you're nothing but a hologram

an image which endeavors to deceive produced

by backlit film projected toward a silver screen

at the rate of twenty-four frames per second

by a machine which opens and closes and resembles

nothing so much as a revolving Maltese cross

delivering not motion but merely the illusion of motion

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