And to weigh less. And to exemplify somehow
a more celestial routine
or at least not be so straight-up
old prairie weed and wind.
It was to be wraithlike and comprise
a big craving for, say, clairvoyance
and the swiftness
of whatever’s most straightforwardly
swift. There were to be more boots
and socks and hats and roots and twigs
in the future that I was to have
the vigor for and the vigor was to be
the sway which would be sort of like a wax
which was to have imbued in me
a kind of grace so that speaking merely spiritually
of course the universe would have
swollen up like a sponge in bubbly water
without there being an ego problem either
since I would have been made mostly
of air. Like time doesn’t wear us down
to little nubs of dumb despair. Like
space doesn’t. Like what we breathe
isn’t Oxygen plus Helium plus Argon
plus Neon plus Methane plus Krypton
plus the confiscated wings of ladybugs
and other gremlins and woozy chemicals
the laws of poetry forbid me to name
here in the star-crossed present
where I lament the noxious resin in my lungs
since I lack the exact lingo to say
the outlook from here—the vista,
the scene—gets more
inert and woebegotten
by the day
when all I wanted was just more waggle
and the peace I thought would come with it
like a sumptuous train or something
headed toward me like a light.