In the next life I don’t want to be nobody
again but me, the one I’ve always been.
We spend our lives wanting to be others, mostly.
Lion wants to be Straw Man; Toto, Man of Tin.
Might as well call it Original Sin!
This thought is an act of high moral probity -
the injunction that it’s okay to just be me -
that stretch of God I happen to know best,
and all I’ll ever taste of being bound or free.
My alpha, my omega, no more and no less.
“I am!” say I. Who am I to protest?
But in my next life, I won’t be a complete clone
of my less than perfect assemblage in this one.
I’ll savor the gristle on every bone
I take as a keepsake from this earthly lesson.
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