Waiting Room Blues (After Anne Sexton)
Today let me be the one in the waiting
room who is sicker than you. A trip
to the pharmacy will likely suffice
for what you’ve got so stare at me
as I have also stared at the sickest. How I grind
my palms together gaze out the window
don’t read the magazines. What does that guy
have? you wonder rightly glad
you are not me that you will buy
a coke to wash your CVS antibiotics down
in an hour. I have been you looking at me
thinking of porous and vulnerable Adam laying
down for his divine operation. But there is no new life
coming out of me.
I wish I was still you
that I wouldn’t have to play this role
for a few more years but someone has to sit
here and worry up a safe place for the others.
Hide inside my fear, miss, and when the time comes
for you to be the sickest
for the sake of us cowards
don’t look too brave.
Making Up a Room For Grief
Lest I be surprised and over
thrown as though by a family of five
arriving suddenly before dawn announcing
a twelve year residency in my tiny
house
I have decided to begin making up a room
for Grief I do not know
when he will come but when he does
I want him to be comfortable
I have made up a bed for Grief beside
a warm gorgeous yellow lamp
so he can read his terrible books late into the night, laughing
I have eaten less sumptuously but not given to the poor
because I do not want them to eat Grief’s food
I have slept less, saving those spared hours
like pennies in a jar for Grief so he can sleep till noon
if he pleases I purchased with my tithes a robe
I do not wear but save hanged
on a peg behind Grief’s door so he need not embarrass himself
when he rises wandering naked through my home
I have given away my sharpest knives gun and poison
lest Grief get any big ideas
when the evening comes I expect him to knock
although I know he owes me no such courtesy
He is a grown man for God’s sake and the house
belongs to him anyway
The Toll Houses
When I die do not
celebrate my life put on
your bird mask gold St. Thomas
medallions in my eyes sober hymns
a thousand years old I need a pagan
Christian funeral my angel is sweating
bullets up here below
the moon and I am kicking
myself for having no alms
prayer fasting to sing
my soul higher the demons
keep making interesting
points about how I belong
to them do not comfort yourselves
with scripture weep
for Chrissake and if I ever did
a good thing for you by accident tell
God it was on purpose now
I need you my wife
has bought the good gin
for after you do your part after
you swear to pray
for my terrible soul every day
you can drink deep get
drunk like Noah and bellow
songs we knew and fear and someone
can say honestly thank God
it was him not us
40 Days
40 days before a man dies
he knows it his soul whispers
to him death is coming while
the man brushes his teeth a funny
thought which gives him pause
brush stuck in his cheek eyes fixed
but the soul can only whisper such
things in the same room where the
soul also says confess your adultery
fornication drunkenness murder and the man
is simply too used to closing that door
at the first hint of a party so
he finishes brushing and inexplicably
wonders while driving to work are teeth bone—
do I polish my skull
every morning?
Fathers of a Kind
My nine pound infant daughter is seventy pounds
of pink rock carved in the likeness of my father. Children
are young, but the newly born are ancient—
disapproving faces, silent but to chastise, powerful
in their unresponsive bodies
to drain the labor from my hands. I am pious
Aeneas. Every time I carry her
from my house, the place burns to ashes behind me.
A Man Speaks To His Sick Body
Formerly faithful slave,
I have not been easy on you
since we were children and now you are paying
dearly for the parties late nights immoderation
disrespect you now fetch me a glass more slowly
don’t regard my nighttime wishes with complete
obedience you sigh wearily, accusingly when I sit
down so I will know how hard I have been on you
but after I’ve beaten myself up awhile for your wounds
the eternal return kicks in and I’m reviving
Plato’s ancient unresolved lawsuit against you
tyrant you brought it on us worrying
a lifetime out of me when all I needed was
an undistracted minute
to think things over and perhaps
a glass of wine to help
Casket
Engineless car without wheels
for one, piloted by six
men, steered into the ground.
Opaque windshield, dirt gasoline, rearview
mirror that extends all
the way back to birth, everything closer
than it appears
