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.
3.1.17
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.
Written at 10:41 in the morning, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA, while ignoring schoolwork.
