I’ve said them separately
thousands of times by now.
When they lock together, the Tetris row I am

will vanish. “More light,” gasped Goethe.
Great man, questing after knowledge to the very end
slash asking his nurse to open the curtains.
I want mine to be the sacred syllable Aum
shuddered out with my tongue
in someone else’s mouth,
good sex, questing after climax to the very end
slash pouring myself in curtains of rain
swept shut across the vacuous light.
What is the right age to plan out your immortal statement
like Neil Armstrong prepping for the moonwalk?
All that effort just to crunch barren gravel under your boots
and get a look at the craters up close.
I want mine to be the sacred syllable Oops,
no utterance more cosmically human.
Or the sacred syllable Ah, eloquently liquid
gulp of satisfaction, the sound that bubbles up
after enough has made it down. It’s also
the Ah of Ah, I get it now, and of Ah, I’m hit,
and of awe, of awe
before the last thing no one has found a way to say.
I don’t know what I want to say.
All I know is who I want around me.
Mehr licht was literary myth. His doctor,
who wasn’t in the room,
wanted to help out the biographers.
No one listened to his nine-year-old niece
who watched him flinch from the sting of the sunlight
and turn to meet her eyes.
Gib mir deine kleine Hand.
Give me your little hand.