You’re nobody until somebody kills you
was the anthem peeling off my tongue.
Dreams of being a man who tastes night
with remains of sun tucked in his back
pockets. Thank God for the ghettos without
mirrors. Windows with anti-reflective glass—
damn me if I see my reflection! What man
will I see hiding behind his mother’s legs?
Death, I lust for you and the stardom
you bring. The lives crawling through spring’s mist
over your graveyards. What is more reliable
than your arrival? Your pull into phantom cars
and their closed blinds. God, if you accept
me, know heaven is vulnerable to the habits
of my past. I will clip the wings of angels
at night and loan them flightless bird feathers
in the day. I will cry with God and sell his
tears as holy water. I will blow into Gabriel’s trumpet
and resurrect those I lost in my youth. When
I land on a deathbed, make my funeral open casket.
My hands should adorn a cane with gems.
A suit tailored for the dead. Faux gold teeth
to rot with me in warm soil. A casket
with a sound system—there is a song I want
to mute when buried. When this life is finally
snatched into the afterlife, take it to hell’s pawn shop.
Though I do not know what to do with living,
this body is worth a second life.