Many a Lifetime Over – John Donn’tt

April 14, 2026

I see a laugh again
I want to move to.
Thinner eyebrows or a first kiss
I paste myself with the strongest glue
Prophetic
And with perfect empathy, I come to know.

At a hundred and twelve years of age
I showed up to my daughter
With wings and blue face
I was proud of my loot that day
When the microwave came knocking
I made of her an orphan
I’d forgotten what a kid I am

I see a plant’s need for the sun,
I am a white shirt burning.
You don’t choke yourself every morning
How come you know investing
Well I never shattered to pieces,
But I’m a glass leaving the table
And soon I’ll come to think that I maybe did invent it

Two old folks who’d never met me
I duck the crater of financial ruin
They throw the future’s legs at me
In my head I feel,
The dent of desire that must be filled
They met in a coal mine, where I wasn’t
They fell down the stairs, and I didn’t
But to the crowd I am where their stories end

Once, I’d ditched myself in nature
I was in a horse’s mouth and thought, bigger.
Atop my ten-foot neck for a week I wept
But I soon came to learn how they slept
Beside the set of wings I put my hoofs to rest

Bob Dylan, the chronic crook
Well I want to steal him too,
Shuffling his ontology, from one leg to another
Scribing his crimes in the songs
Smearing his blood in the ledger
What most of us couldn’t do

With the scythe working for decades
On a hunch I’ve had, I head out for the hall of farmers
In the compound where the thieves of history come clean
Each one will empty eyebrows and gusts of gospel they’ve gathered
I empty metaphors — the training wheels out of my pocket
All that falls will be heard organic, will make the sound of skin,
Will assemble the whispers of the planet as a saint
Hurrah this one doesn’t steal. born knowing already.