The Day I Leave Planet Earth

When no one on earth wonders anymore,

I'll contact the aliens.

(Maybe the flame of imagination still burns somewhere far, far away.)

I'll blow one goodbye-kiss to my host planet

and then I'll go.

If fuzzy socks stop turning hardwood floors into ice-skating rinks, I just can't stay.

When ramen noodles aren't princess hair and backyards don't have snipes in them, I'll pack my bags. 

I'll think about the time when my best friends were invisible,

when yarn and sticks made bows and arrows,

and when a ghost named Sandwich lived in the furnace upstairs.

I'll think about the white stone gazebo on the hill near Victoria place.

It lit up at night and I knew that it was a secret carousel for the brave kids who escaped eight o' clock bedtime.)

(I promised myself I would be one of them, one day.)

I won't forget the speedy, irritable leprechauns I chased, and the snails that died as drivers in the Plastic Car Races.

I'll remember when every neighbor on my grandma's street got a packet of taco seasoning,

(hand-delivered to doorstep.)

Mr. Angry Eyebrows got one, too, but we checked his garden for bodies first.

I still might ask the stuffed animals, politely, if they'll talk to me when I'm alone in the playroom.

If they don't answer, I'll yell at them a little.

(I'll feel bad after, though, and scratch their itchy seams for them, where it tickles so bad it burns.)

Mostly, though, I'll think about how my dreams lived free like jungle birds.

I'll think about the way everyone's ideas are being locked down tight now, in cages.

Why do we need idea anyway? they say.

The internet can show you the world in one click.

I guess they think originality is dead.

(It's not. It's trapped.)

The best thoughts are still waiting to be thought, stuck behind cellphones, and laptops, and cable TV.

They're beating on their cage bars, though,

all of these wild and wonderful thinks. 

They're blurs of fuschia, gold, lavender, bright red, sunny yellow and every color in-between.

If you focus on them, maybe you can set them free.

If you do, an artist can brush in a phoenix-bird where his canvas was white.

A nine-year old girl can dream up telepathic wallpaper that changes as your mood does.

An old woman can tell a story that is so sweet it breaks your heart right in two,

(and mends it at the same time.)

When that happens, the world will be reclaimed.

If it doesn't, though-

I'll keep the aliens on speed-dial.