Autobiography

          After Cesar Vallejo

I’ve died many times in this life,

there with my blood in the snow.

And later, my drunken fall

at three AM,

drowning in the dark.

And there in an ER, a sheet

pulled over my face. I died at birth.

I died by my own

hand, in another city,

for nothing. I died

once before I woke, only

to die again

as I looked out at a foggy dawn.

I died because I wished

to do so. Once

I died as another person.

Once I stepped off a high ledge.

I died for crumbs and I died for everything.

Again I turned to

dust, and rose once more.

Again I denied it.

Again I was

vanished,

or blended into rainfall,

or torn apart by light.

Dead

by a firing squad.

Before I ever began

I was buried,

giving it all up,

or taking it with me

to the other side—

Each time I was born into

a stark eternity—Alone, as I wished

to be, passing

through fire and shadow,

floodwater and winter—

Felled

by the world’s treacheries,

then lost

to the oceans inside me.