Pick a title. Please.

California Dreamin’, or, The Dream of Arrival, or, Something like Life

as tough as it is to recall the details of events
ten, fifteen years later, there is burned into me
the image of your eyes beneath fast-moving lights,
on Broadway perhaps, when my fingers tingled
when I touched them to yours and felt New York
at last – or was this just in a movie starring you
know who, whatshisname, from that television show
when we were kids? meaning the idea of being
here stays one step removed from things in front of us,
cloaked in the mystery of itself like dead skin
yet unshed, this whole state camouflaged by a dream
of its own creation, self-creation, saying we are
more than what or where we have been, or can be
more, once we have obtained the necessary degrees,
personal experiences or at the very least a profile
on Sunday in the New York Times, as only this seems
sufficient to the day’s demands, might actualize,
self-actualize us in the public consciousness,
bestow a dignity or better posture others will see
fit to admire and discuss when we’re not around,
at the same time we walk down an aisle or street
to a soundtrack composed of crazy applause. but

nothing hollow about this certainty: upon arrival
further exhaustion remains, not a moment to waste
in the sun along our parade route – though gilded
trees along the way will be showered by jubilant
champagne teardrops, ahead a prize awaits us,
something real that would allow us, finally,
with all the humility we have saved for such a day,
to disavow our previous deeds, laurels we’ve earned
but wore lightly, put down with a graciousness
of even higher order, while everything, even our words,
fragile as the newsprint they love, burn quickly
in memory, the evidence of our triumph destroyed
by the arrival of what we wanted all along (it wasn’t
fame?) and the beginning of everything else to come.