If I could go back in time
I’d choose early 1985.
I’d withstand the chintz
and cat eyes, the smell
of crimp-scorch, to
backcomb in music,
a cultural revolution.

Hidden in the collected
works of Isaac Newton is
a code for time travel.
It explains abandoned
Aristotelian notebooks.
It explains the ferocity
of the two primacy wars.

Somewhere in the multiverse
Robert Hooke is more
than a law of elasticity.
With luck, in the multiverse
Leibniz is a great deal more
than a chocolate biscuit.
Neither, just a vantage point.

When I find Isaac’s alchemy
I will bathe in cold mercury,
make a merry Saturnalia,
careen into the near past,
release to much acclaim,
two years early, my version
of Appetite for Destruction.

Somewhere in the multiverse
I’m a rockstar, enjoying the
rough music of plagiarism.
Somewhere in the multiverse
Welcome to the Jungle, will be
more than a joke that I say
to my latest lesbian lovers.

A lighthearted one for National Poetry Day