VI.

I do not want certain things:

I do not want the sharp shapes of sick, of dying, diagnose me.

I do not want leaving, and being left be at the center of me.

I do not want all the bitternesses, the second guesses, the stone

            of experience without post-script consuming me.

I do not want to want calm without clarity,

            the city beneath the soft salve and slavish haze.

I want to lay in a whole chapter, a word-hoard of sense.

I want a sifting, a picking and choosing of sound or soundlessness.

I want my sameness, I want some sweet alienation-

            enough to make moonscapes out of leftover moon rocks.

I want a language that ripens in my lifetime and hums in my family’s throat.

I want to see everything, over again, first, last, and future.

I want all the suicides of a day, the syncopation of thinking, 
                      the fullness of arriving.