IN MY NEXT LIFE

Me (procrastinating): in my next life i wont write haiku. i'll write five line poems. they are so much easier.
Rico: you can do that like next week, why wait for another life?

So then I wrote this, you know, as long as I was brainstorming stuff I might not get done next week. 


IN MY NEXT LIFE

In my next life
I will drive to work on an elephant,
start my days from up high.
The ride will not be smooth.
I will give thanks to the ground.

In my next life
they will call me Chef Squid,
my ten arms will swing around the kitchen,
the average human eye will not keep up with the
tantalizing twist of my tentacles,
I will chop like a humming bell,
I will saute on high heat,
vegetables will cry for their mothers.

I will be a mother
with two spines.
The sky
will not be enough to scare me.

The continents will have moved together,
the land may have quivered at each other’s touch,
we may have lost lives in our unity.

So in my next one

I will catch every wedding bouquet,
fold their petals into cranes.
When I have one thousand
I will wish for a snowstorm.
I will hang my heart on an icicle
and wait for a wanderer to see it
flicker.
I will be safe by then.
I will be a shelter.