What I Learned After Begging My Mother For Extra Allowance Money So I Could Buy a Clock Radio

I was in love with a girl. 
And I can say this with absolute certainty, 
as I was in eighth grade, 
and eighth graders know what love is 
 
in ways that you all grow out of 
with your big feet, bad skin, left at the pizza place and walking four miles so you don’t have to call someone for a ride and explain, 
your first kisses, shocking tongue in mouth, cheeks turned rosy 
“experience”. 

I didn’t need experience. 
I had Saturday afternoons with MTV. 
I had heart-in-fist dedications on Casey Kasem, 
I had Love Boat reruns still on network television,  
 

so screw your coward jaded blissful knees-quaking “love,” 
I was in love with a girl 

and she wouldn’t call me back. 
I had tried everything. 

And by “everything,” I mean 
every thing: I tried funny, 
awkward, 
self-deprecating, 
I tried brainy 
I tried stories in class about Santa being hit by an airplane 
and super-weird honesty, 
everything. 

I 
was in love 
with a girl 
and the months were winding that love so tight 
it could slip and fly across the classroom and 
crack 
against the blackboard, I 
 
was in love with a girl 
and finally at the point 
(while sitting in the top bed of my bunk 
beds which I had all to myself) 
of admitting love 
was not enough, 
 
that love! 
was not! 
enough! 
 
to bend this universe as it needed bent. 
I was in love with a girl and sighed 
and turned on my little clock radio 
to WINK 104 
and they said 
“Here’s a great song 
by ELO,” 
 
and there’s Jeff Lynne telling me “Hold on tight 
to your dreams” 
even adding emphasis by rephrasing it in French 
“Accroche-toi a ton reve,” 
and damn, Universe, 
you had me going, 
I almost gave up on love. 
On love! 

In the hindsight of adulthood, 
of thirtyfive years unlearning what I learned that day, 
of good dates, bad dates, eyelashes, folded maps, 
yelling “What the hell do you want from me?!” loud enough 
to be heard four apartments down, 
heart-shaped cards, roses and rings, 
fourteen small teddy bears (one for each 
month) 
poetry that said way too much about the goddamned moon, 
the unruly surprise of warm breath in the ear, 
I’ve learned that the Electric 
Light  
Orchestra 

maybe could have been a little more specific. 
That “Accroche-toi a ton reve,” I never did look that up, 
it might only mean: “Don’t eat croutons”. 

DJs are not (were not) waiting like archangels 
to set the cosmos off its turntable wobble; 
they’re people paid by the hour sitting in 
tiny airless rooms 
who put needles onto grooves 
and let it 
all 
spin.