Harold is Made of Balloons

Harold is made of balloons
completely, while answering phones
at Best Buy, watching Eddie Murphy in
The Haunted Mansion he fills himself with static
and touches himself, feels tethered
to the pole he is tied to
and also his life, which he is told he will go home to
though at home there is a carton of ice cream
and Seinfeld, and the books did not tell him
this was life. It was :Fireman, Policeman,
Astronaut. Or going home to something
different, he is pretty sure there is a small blue
eyed boy involved, though Harold doesn’t like boys,
who try to pop him or let him go into the sky
until he disappears against the blue
or black if it’s night
though often Harold thinks that he should let himself go
against the blue (he is afraid of the black).
There is also a pretty girl who is not blond
who opens the door and offers him pasta in a glass dish,
though Harold is modern and would not mind offering her pasta
in anything, and she tells him (he is sure) that he is
Doing The Right Thing
going to Best Buy the next morning and learning
not to hate Eddie Murphy while rubbing himself
against his own hair, and he believes her because
she fills him up fresh every night
and pulls him under the covers so he doesn’t float away into the
Terrifying Black suspended above him, though sometimes he wonders
If you fall up long enough do you turn into a star?
The books told him that stars take a million plus years to reach here
and most of them died a million plus years ago
and while this sounds less foreign to Harold, who thought
he would be a star for years and years, and
dead for millions of years seems within his grasp,
he is happier under the covers
of the books that told him everything, and though he makes his own book
which is very small and filled with promises to write a big book about the
Truth and Best Buy and The Haunted Mansion, he would not
tether himself to it, he thinks
he might not tether himself to anything.