Shyness is nice

Plastic gray shoes.
Cinder block smiles.
I never asked to be cognizant.

All this wanting flutters around like a moth.
All this sleeping keeps
making me awake.
I never asked
to be the woman in the hat,
the dog in the bag,
the mouse on the cat on the dog.

I never asked to have bones.

I asked for two tickets, Eddie Money style.
I asked for two tickets and a wonderful life, although not necessarily
in that order.
I asked for a slight cessation in stupidity,
a better blender, or lacking that, a
better blended drink.
A woman to love me forever. Snap!

I never asked for wings, although if
given the opportunity I
would like to revise my list and
ask for wings.

Yearn upwards, yearn down.

I never asked for a good haircut, nor the hair
in pair to inform it, bigger muscles, a more dashing
line to my spine.
But we may safely take that as a given.
Much like: human
avarice, artifact worship, and termites.
AKA the overwhelming desire
to gnaw.

Against rising water we built the ark.
Against obliteration we capsule-pack seeds.

I never asked for double-edged tape,
fingerprintless glasses, life
without smudge.

Why is the idea of an apocalypse not
completely distasteful to me?

In another life you
are the samurai, the
inventor of the light bulb, the best
stone-skipper to come out of Derry in the
last 50 years. In another life I am the
housewife, a hang glider, the undisputed master
of the abacus.

I never asked for what wasn't.
I never asked you
to masturbate away hope.