I Did Not Want to Die

(Terry’s Signboard)

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My name is Lobsang.

First I saw the fires,

then the people running with bags

on their heads, children in their arms.

An old monk hobbled past my doorway

saying that the Chinese military were obliterating the monasteries,

killing Tibetans, burning all the pictures of His Holiness.

There had been whispers, Mao Zedong was destroying Tibet,

eradicating Buddha to make way for a different kind of liberation,

the one that money buys.  His Nazis were called, 

The People’s Liberation Army.  His Gestapo

wore khaki and were using our sacred thangkas as toilet paper.

Even the tulkus could not escape.

I was 13 when the six soldiers found me hiding

under the cow dung pile with my little sister.

They raped her first, over and over, until she died.

When they sodomized me I felt my life fly away,

but I have lived to tell our story.

The old ones say I am immortal.