I WANT TO BE ALIVE FOR A REASON

i want to sing & remember wind i think of my training of breath control               the power of looking of feeling song against my teeth                instinct lost i press my hand to diaphragm & nothing balloons underneath you used to be so strong my mother says you used to be so strong before before before                 it’s been eleven long years it’s been a century it’s been ten minutes since my last poem i forget how each time i forget everything so i must be unreal someone who feels so much & not at all a palestinian a queer fragile & unbrave but o so loud throat clenching under weight of all i love to say a mumble of half-languages fighting for dominance i                    do not know how many ways to say                  it’s here in the sky i feel pain shooting down my spine i ache behind my ears i ache in the phantom spaces all over where i was touched last i am an enemy of dust i am an amalgamation of everyone i have ever loved & o do they not love me long / so quickly we leave & i forget it all but dust lives under my fingernails in the scabs on my gut in the scars across my thigh o to remember every blemish origin o i want to feel young o i want to live a life i’ve loved i’m done with hurting without living i’m in the sky i’m on the land it’s primal to ask who am i who am i             i’ve written my only happy moments to death to legend to myth                  they live in my poems & not in my body they live in my poems & leave me drained so long i’ve lived as a myth of myself potential eyes always watching i write & imagine audience o                     who will remember me o                when will i deserve memory o                  hope this             one day i will be                presence          manifest

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