H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
JIM COHN
I
Give Up My Place In The World To Come
I give up my place
in the world to come.
You go instead, it’s yours. Let me remain
here, alongside
cancer children in orange
wigs. With children
in the ground, cruel
bullets like pressed
flowers in their smiling
faces. Don’t wait
for me. Don’t wait up.
It’s so beautiful––women & men, torn from
each
other’s side. Whole
cities & nations unravel
below. The light
beyond, like omniscience
in the novel, not
something of any worth.
Give me the everpresent
exodus, the exodus,
the
fire-in-the-tree-that-does-not-burn
exodus of people
living in the impeccable
alley of centuries.
Give me huge drowning
floods &
bitterest cold. I give up my place.
Leave me in this gruesome factory to glow
& hiss &
rot. Dress me in the silent clothes
of terrorized forests.
Burn me in a firestorm
of poor houses crushed
beneath the homeless
blue stones of war.
Persecute me for my
starving wall of
violets. Lock me up with
the unreformed and
the penitent in the braided
garlic jails of
birth. Just cross out my name
when the saints
last call. Send the one who
bleeds to death with
apples falling on the
dark street. Order
those dragged by snipers
across the road of
the sky, dragged by
needles &
explosions, dragged by oceans
first. Until
devoured like others in the
ovens of oblivion, I
give you my place to
prepare your reward of
springtimes to come,
of wheatfields, of romance & sudden murder.
31 January 1994
[Originally published in NHS 1994, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs94/index.html#34.]