Sometimes I Die

Sometimes I die,

I drop to a heap and I am at my feet and I have feet again and I walk on,

Like the world moves on from my death-lump; I walk on,

My death-light sends the shadows to my fore,

All in front of me

In shadow

Sometimes I die and I bring someone with me,

Someone I need to die properly, maybe heroically,

Beautiful women, poets, an enemy, someone to juxtapose,

My gravestone disguised as door, I’ll beckon them toward and tell them

‘I don’t think that we can go on anymore’,

And then down with the door, the hammer’s ‘no-more’,

The bottom floor,

The perfect murder

Sometimes I die after dieing,

A double-take thing where I jerk like a spring,

And I’m born

Sometimes I die without knowing,

I’ll look for my love or my song and I’ll find that it’s gone,

Replaced by a flower or something that dies, too, in times eyes

Adieu

Sometimes I find myself rotting somewhere,

Somewhere I haven’t been in a long time,

The end of the garden; the sweet shelf in Garvin’s,

I’ll see some old rag that I used as a flag,

My half-fleshed finger pointing in some old, extinct direction

From the moist and mildewed sleeve,

Or I’d hear the song of flies my body fed,

Get nostalgic and then miss myself

A great deal

Sometimes I save myself from dieing,

I see my eyes roll and the grasp of gravity vacuum me

From the arms of a good girl or from the hook of a God’s rod,

And I’ll give me what I need;

More time

Life goes on; perpetual periphery,

I stay still and leave the changes to the scenery,

The window of the train,

I’m forever on the train, crying, dying not to die until it stops

At some specific destination far from death