Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.

-Pancho Villa, last words

Let my last words be “good night”

Even if I don’t have time to utter them

As a Mercedes truck smushes me

Under the moon

At the intersection in Times Square.

Tell them I said “good night”

Even as I choke to death on three

Oysters—my world drowning

In the table’s champagne because

Dr. Heimlich’s method won’t work.

My bubbles, in the event of my drowning,

Mean “good night”

As I sink to the floor of a salty sea—

My brackish tears one with the water.

And as my airplane crashes,

My spasmodic shakes

And screams of “Oh fuck,”

Mean “good night”

Respectively in sign language

And interpretive invectives.

And as I lie

With you on these cool pillows

So cadaverous under flannel sheets…

If I drift off to death’s counterfeit

And never wake up

Slowly dying of pleasure

And carbon monoxide poisoning

Not having the chance to pick up

My blue Bic pen with bulging

Green veins on my left hand

To scratch out on cream paper

And tell you what I would have said,

Tell them.