....From The Tree Of..................Pain Around Us
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_______________________________________________________ Foiled Rush, rush, rush to wait. Plenty of time, no parking, now I'm late. Hospitals are the cruelest teachers of patience even pre-registered this time; it did not help. No matter how I try to foil the system make an easy slide into the water, it never works. There still is just enough time to plop down in a chair look at the eyes all round, and know that death is growing in so many. The Last Patient Medical imaging, they call it. Ways to see inside into the brokenness or tumors- something awful, usually. A room filled up with waiters, mostly old - some young, athletic-looking, must have gotten a water ski caught in an awkward position or fallen off a mountain; all the usual bus stop people, familiar characters in a drama taking place in every town and city all over the world. Waiting to see what news their bones and tissues have for them, and hoping for some love letters. A half-hour past my appointment time, a mother, pushing a stroller with a roly-poly baby, squealing delightedly and a sulking, older sister and a limping Tiny Tim, the oldest of the three, came into the room. The room went silent. Something about the doomed look in that boy's eyes, ringed with charcoal set off everybody's truth meter: This Is Bad. The orderly called them next and when he asked, what is the problem his mom said, I don't know. Last week he started limping -but the boy knew. You could tell. At night, I dream of giant amoeba-like blastomas, and they're hungry and I'm feeding them all the bone that I can find so when they come to Tim, they'll just feel full-- and pass him by. Bandsaw Suicide Typing at my desk, entering charges, going through charts, I overheard a conversation taking place behind me about a suicide in Verona, Pennsylvania, just across the river from where I sat. Impossible, I thought, no one could do that- but it seems a man in 1979 engaged in an argument with his wife, a real apocalyptic- 'Here I draw my line it's taken years but you have crossed it' sort of thing got a notion in his head to go downstairs into his workshop climb atop his mounted bandsaw and by leaning in, by rotating and slowly giving his weight to it, by forgetting his own anguish .........lost in a nebulae of rage - the newest, most atypical of anything in the sky that ever was, or ever will be - he cut himself in half. I wondered how many years of burning meatloaves hating inlaws, sexual coldness, even harping about the toilet seat it took to drive a person to do a thing like that -how much smashing of his atoms had taken place before he found it in himself, to go out in a statement like Nagasaki; just the biggest mushroom FUCK YOU cloud the world has ever seen and then I thought about my favorite line from Alien- when the evil android glittered from the eyes trying to explain just what it was about that acid dripper, murderer- that creature with the teeth he found compelled him so: I admire its purity- he said. One Dead Dog Too Many New house. New chair rail, wallpaper- new plush rug. One dog, one whimper- too many years dog knew you when -you had to do it. One dead dog too many. She cried herself to sleep too long. Mom left. Dog stayed- she held on tight. New house new life- old story, you cold hearted bastard, you won ....................but late at night I hear the scritch scritch scratch, a little girl's raggety-assed cries a pillow couldn't muffle; will be there on your grave someday with teeth bared .......ghost ............dog .......come and then you'll learn: some things you can't put down. In The Trundle, One Way Or Another There have been women kept in boxes under beds. One, for seven years as a sort of accessory to a marriage. There have been men who have kept them in the most matter-of-fact of ways without seeing---what monsters they had been, but rather taking what was there to take, like someone plucks a pear from a tree and bites. And rage rolls out a pie crust, dusts a room and never admits that late at night, while turning in bed the thought of the sharpness in the knife drawer, rivals the moon in brightness; is, in fact the star she sings to, night after night. Nowhere To Run Pain is focus. Usually floating creamy soft is gone and all there is is a spike right through the forehead. You've been William Telled by the unforgiving layer of your flesh that won't be pulled off, put off. Stuck in a carmelized shine of oh my god this can't be happening. Pinch yourself. This is your life, your bane, the way your face is yours and no one else's. What Can Kill Often, there are chunks of heart, when torn can't be repaired and there are words need not be said they have no language other than one that's understood and almost telepathic things you never ask for there are things you should never have to never stop to frame the words, the words are already there there are parts so dearly loved that giving away feels like a bleeding and it murders you. It murders the freest part of you. The part that felt it was first in all the world, but that was a presumption. And that, of all the other lumps hurts most of all- so you cut off all the ballast and you swim away to shore, a little shaken, feeling unfamiliar, walking in new skin. There are those of us who never learn to not go near the water. Mammography Have a second look at it see it on the monitor x-ray it interpret it draw your circles. Leave your expensive second opinions forward them to the guy in charge and if you need to get in touch I'll be at the office buried already in work, so leave a voicemail. Benign Faces like paste above cotton gowns in jammie prints- ridiculous on sixty, seventy year old geishas in that Tea House of the Dying Moon: third floor Mammography unit. Wrinkles peeked from each kimonoed patient, patiently waiting her turn to be pressed and probed and sent for second opinions, perhaps an ultrasound, or worse: ..........biopsy. I could see their veiny hands as they stared at nothing- at what is most important: the clock. And watched as hands fussed at the ties on printed wrappers. No one's folded in prayer, for that would be to admit it. I could tell the ones who'd had bad news before- their eyes were burning white, lit up with a kind of kerosine hope and fear. I had to turn away, dismayed and study Oprah. An issue on giving comfort: at home, with loved ones. Children, family, lovers -the giving of food and flowers, cards and heartfelt notes, to feel how rich the earth is, sky, the moon and sun and all it is to be alive and know it's not ..........forever so we e-x-t-e-n-d ourselves in ways, before everything dies, but I couldn't find .... one could answer to what I saw in those eyes. I heard my name I heard benign, and then I left. I dropped my two dollar silver token into the slotted parking attendent. I watched the striped, metal arm rise in the air with all of the world outside, in front, and felt I'd just paid Charon his coin to row me back. On To Page 4 .............. 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