~after Claude McKay
When I die, let me drift easy from your mind,
do not cling and clamor for my absent words.
Ghosts speak quiet fortunes of unheard rhymes,
I'd rather find myself reborn in a flock of birds.
When I die, I hope it comes in the form of sleep,
that I'm here one moment, and the next I'm gone.
I'd rather not tire, treading water so deep,
not knowing when the final card is drawn.
But so many now meet that common end,
the cannibal that grows in the gut or the bones,
so many get devoured by that demon within,
riding morphine drip through black sea of moans.
If it awakens in me, let me die by my own means,
I'd rather not succumb to the dull teeth of disease.
~after Pablo Neruda
I do not live for myself, I do not live for you,
my heart, my breath, automatons of preservation.
I live oblivious of the multifaceted gateways
before each footfall, every step splintering paths
diverging this invisible wood. I live
like the stars must live, incinerating their oxygen.
This life gives the gifts of the senses,
a bouquet of river, of blood, of soil and song.
I live without knowing how or why,
this body nothing but a vessel, a pupa stage,
I live within seconds, within words forming wings,
each moment mere inches from the next precipice,
I stand and observe that standing is perception,
that I exist, like light too young to be seen in the sky.
del.icio.us
