What I Will Never Do

I will never learn to converse in Chinese

Russian, Farsi or Greek

even less write poems in Mandarin.

I will never own a mansion or motorbike

grow a handlebar moustache

live in the desert

set foot on the moon

birth a third child

have blue eyes

lie in bed with Leonard Cohen

between my thighs

carry a Chihuahua around in a purse

be a flaneur through cobblestoned streets

of Paris and Vienna.

It’s a matter of simple arithmetic

not a self-sabotaging tic

I am cornered at the edge of bereft

before the diagonals of time

fold me over the dotted line

to halve what’s left.

I cannot remember everything

I have ever seen and been

despite 47 journals full

what’s done is there

places, tenderness, despair

but I am running out of hours to care

now is when devotions

must be selected

like a last meal on death row

yes this, not that

I will, I won’t

just one last time:

a swim

a soup

a chip (Salt and Vinegar please)

In what remains

I attend to what pushes yet:

the phlebotomy of words

brimming to be let

& the names of everyone I’ve loved and lost

Those, oh, let me not forget.