1. Life is a long road of bumps and bruises, with splinters along the way for good measure. I caught a cat by the tail; the yowl and hiss reminded me of my mother’s wailsong as she held my grandfather’s dying body.  

2. I want more than I need. I want fame beyond infamy; I want to celebrate every curve of a woman’s body and I want every woman to want me. Give me a feast fit for a king, and make all my enemies tremble in my shadow. 

3. But even in my mental frailty, I know that what I want most is heaven: the lightness of a Kleenex—not for the wiping away of tears, but to know what weightlessness is again.  

4. Take me back to the womb, along an eightfold path: let me understand and save a precious thought where words build up what hands have destroyed; bring me the honest job of conscious effort, with a complete mind concentrating on four corners. And when I have passed through heaven’s gauntlet, then let me be born again, anew, afresh.