As if

As if

(I wanted to live

my next life backwards!)

Okay start out dead and come to,

luckily, (as opposed to cremation),

in a dark small space

buried six feet under.

No one can hear nor care.

You use all the energy you can muster

to claw, scratch and dig you way out

of your claustrophobic situation

with limited air,

eating dirt along the way

making room for yourself in passage!

You have arrived

with no one to believe you.

It is even worse than identify theft!

You have insulted everyone

who has inherited from your

by your unbelievable presence.

You have no insurance

or way of claiming your situation

to be real.

It is only the freakishness

of your situation that keeps you alive

by the curious and the estranged,

who associate with you

as some demonic messenger

for what comes out of your mouth

to explain yourself.

The nursing home wants details

on your financial situation

which you cannot any more provide.

How you get healthier

is from sympathetic souls and dumpsters.

Your, quote ‘retirement’,

has to be a life of crime

since there is no way

for you to receive or cash

any benefit checks

that have your phony name on them.

You work without a green card

and scrap a living out of cash income

on a daily basis and of course,

pawned that stupid gold watch!

After some 40 years of de-toxing

and believing that you are an immortal,

you become

unable to maintain your appearances.

'Youthful' feels like an emaciation

that you think

no one wants to tell you about,

like a kind of shrinkage/cancer,

that no one seems to have heard about

before you, before now.

You invent personas

that go with your new looks

and prey upon others in ways

that you feel could get you arrested

if ever discovered.

You feel profoundly guilty

and deeply sick inside

but no one seems to realize

how depraved you have become.

Your life now is as a vampire

with diminishing skills.

You hide out in schools

getting shyer by the day

and more fearful of discovery

by the night.

You listlessly but youthfully

play yourself into younger

and deeper boredom and dismay.

You stealthy substitute yourself

into families as a runaway child

hoping that no one will ever really know

and that that child does not return!

Every phone call or knock at the door

threatens you

to the very core of your being.

Anxiety represents your decay.

Eventually after a masquerade

of family settings

you realize your only option is hospitals,

large hospitals with big birth wards.

Any stray crib will do!

It will take a real miracle

for you to double up as an unborn twin,

crowning and reluctant to come out.

There is no way you will get nine months

of safety and passage.

Embarrassment and a c-section

will force you out.

Your dream of closure with orgasm

as completion will end with a gasp

and at best, your death

by some crib syndrome in discovery.

And once again,

if your are lucky enough,

a no ash circumstance,

which you should humbly accept

since this time around,

you do not have the where with all

to stupidly dig yourself back into life.

My advice is that

you should have gone

for the reincarnation in the first place,

committed your memories to a new brain

and played through in a normal fashion

and blessedly not said a word to anyone

about who, where, when or how,

and just smiled,

an old soul sort of smile and proceeded!