To All My Angry Friends

Stand up and say, like the bastards ye are:

Hello Gomorrah, 
the euthanasia of my soul stops here.
I signed no dying will
that permits you to steal my pain
& makes me safe for the rest of you.
Pain may or may not be life,
but it is mine,
& I claim it.
I claim the right to fight,
I claim the right to feel outside your prescription,
I claim the right to be other.

You told me many things as if they're important,
but I no longer listen.
The din of your ecstasy
is repulsive to me.
I will not share in your need to define
that which does not concern me.
I will not enable your need for approval
from those whom you oppress.
I will not be at the table to split the tab
when the final check comes.

I will always fight
the shape of your hatred.

You can bury me under piles of rationale;
I will swim through.
You will choke me with a steady diet of lies and venom;
I will starve before I match your corpulence.
You can label me, shun me, even kill me . . . 

to me, death can come but once,

you will die always.

You are a salt pillar:
you spawn only desolation.
I am a rotting corpse:
my flowers are beyond your control.

from Spiel In the Face of Those Who Wish You Ill

written 1999