Gale Acuff

I don't want to die but I've got no choice

and I'm ten years old and might live to be

ten times older than 10, a century

that is, four-score, ten decades, they don't all

sound the same, that's funny about words, words

can mean more than one thing and mean nothing

even though they mean something and even

then they can take you away from what they

signify, multiply one year in days

by one hundred years old and then divide

36,500 days and

I'm just 3,650

now, give or take, it's February but

I was born in March, born March 21st,

or born again, of course. Happy birthday.

I love everybody just as long as

I don't have to show them or tell them or

at least not too much, my parents and mutt

excepted and the woman I'll marry

and I'm only ten years old now but I

know how I'll feel, that's where babies come from

--you're in love and don't give a fig even

for yourself and maybe not even for

her, love seems bigger than its lovers and

it happens mostly at night, romance I

guess I mean, I'm a little young for that

kind of knowledge now but I've been through it

in a way, which is why I'm here now and

how I got born so let's see how we die.

If I never wake I hope to sleep in.

One day I'll die and that should show me, death

will, that I won't live forever even

if I'm only ten years old now and there

are plenty more numbers greater before

my time comes to croak--I may have a long

life in front of me and before I

die I'll look back on how long it was and

probably think it wasn't long enough

and/or I wasted it and ahead lies

Eternity, which is the Afterlife 

and not time as I knew it at all so

I wonder whether when I'm timeless then

what I'll be doing if I'm not simply

being and my Sunday School teacher says

that I'll find out but probably won't care.

When you're dead you're dead but there's religion

to call you back to life again or so

they say at church and Sunday School and I'm

only ten years old, I believe 'most

anything because I'm ignorant and

adventuresome, too, take the time when I

safety-pinned a towel to my shoulders and

pretended to be Superman and jumped

from the supper table and broke my knee

-cap but when Mother saw my footprints on

the tabletop she whipped me good before

she drove me to the hospital--but my

knee stopped hurting, I think that's called something,

there must have been gold kryptonite, which robbed

me of my powers. Now I'm just normal.

Nobody goes to Heaven who isn't

dead, that's good to know, that's what I learned at

Sunday School today and I don't want to

die, of course, No sane person does said our

Sunday School teacher to us ten-year-olds

but then she smiles and says Let's go crazy

for Jesus and they all shouted Amen

but I shouted Hooray, which got lost in

and among all those Amens but you can

bet that God and Jesus and the Holy

Ghost caught it and when I'm croaked and standing

before God in Heaven to be judged, if

I can still stand then, He might bring it up

and it be enough to sink me down to Hell.

But on my way down will echo Hooray.

One day there won't be any people on

Earth, they'll all be dead or maybe colo

-nizing some other marble, which I doubt,

people often do awful things and I

know that if I were a planet and I spied

a spacecraft coming after me I'd dis

-appear if I could or black myself out

or step to one side, if there are sides in

space, and maybe even shout Ole when

the ship made a pass, then finally wear it

out and as for the ritual kill it would

still be a kill but maybe I'd have mercy

and train it to carry me on its back

or pull a plow through an endless furrow

but me still in the shade. We have liftoff.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals.