Cento from Dorothea Lasky Part I

My soul was a man & like a man
I make a toast to me, my friend.
& now when you see a man six feet tall,
& he sits there in a heap in front of me thinking of suicide

with a handsome boy who wants to hold me all night,
I understand, I want to kill myself now.
Some have described
the real self

growing ever so slightly from his forehead.
There is shit on my hands;
this is how it feels when you talk to me.
The flowers scattered themselves everywhere.

Now there is something between me &
the heart of me, bursting within itself!
Don't you think that is sad, that here
is noisy with light. The blackbirds are

so in love with anyone --
perhaps it is chemistry that
was bright & blue & plastic.
& death was untuned to them & he made them an unlikely hole

of a great eternity, too large to even be
unlikely & mean.
I mean to say
a serious mistake: the universe is unlikely.