I sleep in my clothes

I want to disappear.  

To grow smaller and smaller, 

less and less noticeable,

until I wink out of existence.

I sleep in my clothes.

I am not talking about what you think I am.

That act is abrupt, and has an impact.

It calls attention, and upsets.

It leaves a void.  

Which is not what I want. 

I keep my shades drawn.

I want to disappear.  

To be forgotten.

So that when I slip beneath the surface of this world,

I do not leave a ripple.

It so happens

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailor shops and movie houses
withered, impenetrable, like a swan made of felt
navigating my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoe shops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

-Pablo Neruda, Walking Around

Always

Facing you
I am not jealous.

Come with a man
at your back,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your bosom and your feet,
come like a river
filled with drowned men
that meets the furious sea,
the eternal foam, the weather.

Bring them all
where I wait for you:
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be, you and I,
alone upon the earth
to begin life.

-Pablo Neruda

Wind

I have died, but you are still among the living.

And the wind, keening and complaining,
makes the country house and the forest rock
-not each pine by itself,
but all the trees as one,
together with the illimitable distance;
It makes them rock as the hulls of sailboats
rock on the mirrorous waters of a boat basin.

And this the wind does not out of bravado
or in a senseless rage,
but so that in it's desolation
it may find words
to fashion a lullaby for you.

-Boris Pasternak

Manyoshu

Everybody tells me
my hair is too long

I leave it
as you saw it last
dishevelled by your hands.

-Lady Sono No Omi Ikuha