I want to be an unpaid fireman, a pure
response to the negative,
and I want to stop fighting, lay my head
on the ashes.

When I grow up (I hear a man again
say somewhere, sometime
in the course of a downturned economy)
I want to be

the vein hitting the wall of my skin as someone
pulls me from the corner
and teaches me to dance like an amateur,
no money, no.

Haven’t you
ever danced with yourself
at a small, useless party
celebrating no occasion?

I try every way
to remove my mask
save to reach all the way up through the poor muscles
in my human hand and remove it.

I, doused water,
will subside
like a dry wave one day, and no one
will be able

to look at me without feeling
the dead force with which
I wake in my arms
and go to work.