This poem is about dying and getting to choose what you do after death. It’s also about forgiveness and wrongdoing and wanting to see others suffer. It is also about sex. It’s not about sex. Although it could be. It’s not. But it might be. It’s not. It is. 

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3.1.17

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When I die I hope I don’t die

fully. Lord God I ask that you

turn me into a single eye

which drifts on the wind like pollen

 

which travels through air like the heart

of a fruit fly, and sees the circus of human

activity, the burlesque joke of human action,

with refreshed perspective.

 

(Perhaps)

 

this single eye will see that when mouths

move and speak words the words mean something

and that love is not an empty trashcan

and that things can be beautiful if you let them.

 

Let them.

See light breaking through glass or

a single strand of hair caught on a nail

blowing  sideways like a lonely flag after

 

(the war has been lost)

 

Lord God I ask you not to forgive

my trespasses, but to smite those who’ve trespassed

against me and to allow the single eye of my existence

to see them suffer.

 

(Lord God I take it back)

 

I don’t want to be an eye in the wind.

Please allow me to die but not die, and turn into a lonely body

on a bus, heading infinitely west, traveling at fifty-five miles

per hour, always away from the sun.

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Written at 10:41 in the morning, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA, while ignoring schoolwork.