I won’t shoot myself
in the temple, I won’t even shoot myself
from the back, nor will I hang myself
with a garbage bag, and if I do,
I promise you it won’t be
in a police car with handcuffs on
nor in the cell of the police station of some town
whose name I only know
for having to go through it
To come back home. Yes, I may be in danger
But I promise you, I trust the worms
living under the planks
from my house they will do what they have to do
to the corpse of an animal more than I trust
in which an agent of the country’s law
I close my eyes as I would
a good christian, or cover me with a sheet
so clean that even my mother
I would tuck myself in it. When it kills me I will
like most americans,
I promise you: with tobacco smoke
or choking on a piece of meat
Or so broke that I’ll freeze
in one of those winters that we insist
in calling the worst. I promise you that if you hear
that I have died near some
policeman, so that policeman killed me. Ripped me off
of us and left my body, which is,
no matter what they taught us,
bigger than compensation
that a city offers for a mother to stop crying,
and more beautiful than the gleaming bullet
drawn from the folds of my brain.