Me in Paradise

Oh, to be ready for it, unfucked, ever-fucked.

to have only one critical eye that never

divides a flaw from its lesson.



To play without shame. To be a woman

everyone can screw, who feels only

the pleasure of usefulness and who turns



so much anguished release into a buried

treasure for the future to relish, to buy

new tights for, to parade in fishboats,



lick the final sweat off my neck. To hope

without fear of hope, not holding the hole,

I will catch the superbullet



in my throat and feel its astounding force

with admiration. Absorbing its kind

of glory. I must be someone



with very short arms to have lost you,

to be crying to the pawnshopkeeper

eking out a living in my head,



which pounds with all the clarity

of a policeman on my southernmost door.

To wish and not jinx it: to wish



and not fish for it: to wish and forget it.

To ratchet myself up with hot liquid

and find a true surprise.



Prowling the living room for the lightning

that brings my slow purity back.

My blood-smeared knife of a tongue.



To miss you without being so damn cold

all the time. To hold you without dying otherwise.

To die without losing death as an alternative.



To explode with flesh, without collapse.

To feel sick in my skeleton, in all the serious

confetti of my cells, and know why.



Loving you has made me so scandalously

beautiful. To give myself to everyone but you.

To luck out of you. To make any other mistake.