Sick of Being Me

Jean Lehrman

 

Sick of being

me

want 

to be

you.

 

I

want

your

life

I am planning

 

to be you, tomorrow

I wake up you, 

you,

me

     

the police will not believe

I have stolen

your life,

I will have escaped,

and from then on

 

i will take anybody’s life 

i want to, i will roam free, 

when i tire

of one life I’ll take another

I’ll    be    notorious

      

no one can do anything about it, 

I have become

a fact of life 

you have to accept, 

I have stolen your life

 

and you now have mine.  

I will live everybody’s life

no one will be safe from me,

as I inhabit the earth

and all its denizens, soon

     

I will take over the lives 

of snakes    and birds    and water, 

my sanity

will be called into question, 


there will be hearings

to impeach me, 

but no one 

can find me.

I

move    too    fast

      

one to another, first

I'm you, then

the sky, then

I'm in the pump 

at the gas station, 

 

and running your car, and your 

brakes won’t work

unless I say so, I 

am in charge 

of the world, 

     

no one can stop me

you are all in trouble, 

you better pray to me, 

I am pretty moody.

I do what i want,

 

and I go where i want,

and no one can stop me. 

i don’t have to live

my life anymore 

and i like it that way,

     

and I'm stealing your life,

and I'm running away with it,

tucked under my arm like a

loaf of bread,

stolen from a baker, 

 

by a    

starving     

man

and I'm eating your life

with jam and butter on it

 

it’s my      delicious      breakfast.

      

(previously published in If You Come Back I Won't Have Aids, (Dead Proofreaders Society, 2004).

   


Jean Lehrman’s  first book, If You Come Back, I Won't Have AIDS (Dead Proofreaders Society, 2004) draws on her personal experiences with AIDS, addiction and violence. A popular poet and performer  in New York City, she is published in The Pedestal Magazine ,CLWNWR, RogueScholars.com, and anthologized in Cat's Breath (Rogue Scholars Press, 2005 ).

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