As a kid desperation used to fill me for more, more, more, but I couldn’t put words to the panicky feeling beyond once telling my mother that “I don’t want to be normal. I don’t want a normal life,” knowing even then that “normal” wasn’t exactly the right word. 

More of everything is what I wanted: more sky, more wind, more space, more freedom more travel more music more poems more love more life. As I type these words my own voice in my own head keeps whispering more in italics. 

Every line of the poem below, hopping and skipping from more to more, skimming through a life and dipping down into the wild hunger and hurt and joy bursting out of it, feels familiar to me. Then the last line made me laugh out loud, and all I could think was: Yeah. This guy wants everything, too.

New Restrictions, by Dean Young

It doesn’t matter how many
Wallace Stevens poems you’ve memorized
or if you had sex in the graveyard
like an upside-down puppet
or painted your apartment red
so it feels like sleeping inside a heart
or the trees were frozen with ravens
which you sent pictures of to everyone you know
or your pie dough’s perfect
or you once ran a sub-5-minute mile
or you’re on the last draft
of your mystery novel and still
don’t know if the vicar did it
or every morning that summer
you saw a fox stepping through the fog
but it got no closer
or once you helped drag a deer
off the road by the antler
sit blinked
or which song comes from which side
of your mouth as you drive
all night all night all night
or how deep and long you carry
a hitch in your breath after crying
or shot a man in Tennessee
or were so happy in France
or left your favorite scarf in a café,
the one with the birds and terrible art
or the Klimt
or you call your mother once a week
even after she’s dead
or can’t see a swan without panic
or have almost figured out
what happened to you as a child,
urge, urge, nothing but urge
or 600 daffodils
or a knife in the glove box
or a butterfly on a bell,
you can’t park here.