A poem by Roberto Cruz, Jr.

I don’t want to be a fly-by-night
I don’t want to be malignant
I don’t want to be a merciless beast.
I don’t want to be well-endowed
with the biggest penis there is.
I don’t want to be a welfare line
or a ticket to suicide.
I don’t want to be a double-chin
on two legs with two arms tacked on.
I don’t want to be this line right now.
I don’t want to die before my parents.
I don’t really want to leave this world, either.
I don’t want be a lone hair in a cold glass of chocolate milk.
I don’t want to be either this or that at the moment.
I don’t want to give in to the establishment.
I don’t want to sadden anyone in this poem.
I don’t want the red light or
the shopping cart blocking
my parking space.
I don’t want a single thing, really, and actually.

I don’t want to relive family and friends’ deaths.
I don’t want me sometimes.

I don’t think this is going anywhere.

I don’t want any blood of any kind on my hands.
I don’t like the way some assholes treat the truly meek.
I don’t think I’d like much to be a chandelier
broken into a million pieces.

I don’t like the thought of cancer and how
it breached my cousin’s perimeter and,
ultimately, ate her up, killing her in her early 20’s.
I loathe that thought, really.

I don’t appreciate the idea that some people
will read this poem or listen to it as I
recite it and pigeon-hole me as some predictable
and contrived poet that writes the same shit
everyone else does in the millions of
crap journals and crap online poetry websites
that pass themselves off as legitimate.

I don’t want to be lumped in with all of them;
I don’t want to be left out in left-field, either.

I don’t want this poem I pen now to piss
you off in the slightest.

I don’t want relentless sunshine when all I
want to do is hide my face.

I don’t want this burden that holds me
and so many others down.

I don’t want all this to go on so long that
I, no-one of us, ever meets his/her true love.

I don’t want to give in to my shortcomings

when
I have
all

this
love around.