It was ELO’s fault.

Why instead of begging my mom for extra allowance money so I could buy a record album
I should have declared vendetta on the Electric Light Orchestra.

by Matt Mason

I was in love with a girl.
And I can say this with absolute certainty,
as I was in eighth grade,
and eight 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 your mouth, cheeks turned floodplain “experience.”

I didn’t need experience.
I had Saturday afternoon movies on channel 6,
I had heart-in-fist dedications on Casey Kasem,
I had first-run Love Boat still on TV,

so fuck your coward jaded blissful first-hand 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 uncoordinated, I tried brainy,
I tried stories in class about Santa being hit by an airplane Night Before Christmas style (and
on the nose of the plane arose such a clatter, the pilot knew at once Saint Nick was a splatter)
I tried 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,
sitting on the lion-print sheets of my bed,
of admitting love
was not enough,

that love!
was not!
enough!

to bend this universe as it needed to be bent.
I was in love with a girl
and sighed
and turned on my radio
to WOW or Sweet 98 or whatever the hell it was
and they said “Here is a new 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 à ton rêve,”
and, damn, Universe,
you had me going,
I almost gave up on love,
on love!

In the hindsight of adulthood,
of thirty years unlearning what I learned that day,
of good dates, bad dates, eyelashes, bra straps,
yelling “What the fuck 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 every month),
poetry that said way too much about the goddamn moon,
the disproportionate surprise of warm breath on the inner ear,
that the Electric Light Orchestra

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

DJs are not waiting like archangels
to set the cosmos off their turntable wobble; they
tie up the request line talking to their girls,
making promises,
that sound too much
like pop songs,

they’re underpaid dudes
who put needles onto grooves
and let it
all
spin.

Matt Mason: “My favorite poem is one that, at first, makes me wonder if it’s a poem. I love a poem written because that’s what the poet wanted to write and they didn’t worry if it fit the mold or definition or what they were lectured a poem is supposed to be. Not that we shouldn’t study the traditions and forms and histories, but poems like that shine for me: they have surprise, coming in disguises instead of the formal suit or gown we all thought they were supposed to wear back when they were set in front of us in high school. These are the poems that, had they been set in front of me in high school, would have gotten me on fire for poetry years earlier.”