"My Life."
I thought I would write a series of poems
called "My Life, My Death."
I've written those.
[LAUGHTER]
Your life, your death, their life, their death and so on
and so forth.
I never really got that for them, but I wrote a few
and it's sort of a set.
"My Life."
"The huge doll of my body refuses to rise.
I am the toy of women.
My mother would prop me up for her friends.
"Talk, talk," she would beg.
I moved my mouth, but words did not come.
My wife took me down from the shelf.
I lay in her arms.
"We suffer the sickness of self," she would whisper.
And I lay there dumb.
Now my daughter gives me a plastic nurser
filled with water.
"You are my real baby," she says.
Poor child!
I look into the brown mirrors of her eyes
and see myself diminishing, sinking down to a depth
she does not know is there.
Out of breath, I will not rise again.
I grow into my death.
My life is small and getting smaller.
The world is green.
Nothing is all."