“But people would squirm, it would hurt them in some way,
And I am too knowledgeable now to hurt people imprecisely.
/ No longer do I live by the law of me,
No longer having the excuse of youth or craziness,
/ And dying you know shows a serious ingratitude
For sunsets and beehive hairdos and the precious green corrugated
/ Pickles they place at the edge of your plate.
Killing yourself is wasteful, like spilling oil
/ At sea or not recycling all the kisses you’ve been given,
And anyway, who has clothes nice enough to be caught dead in?
/ Not me. You stay alive you stupid asshole
Because you haven’t been excused,
/ You haven’t finished though it takes a mulish stubbornness
To chew this food.
/ It is a stone, it is an inconvenience, it is an innocence,
And I turn against it like a record
/ Turns against the needle
That makes it play.”