My Internist Prescribes
Guess it depends on which of your three eyes that you look at it with.
All I see, floating around me, is detritus.
The detritus of denied intimacy.
The detritus of the glib.
Like beautiful Venezia, you float in your gondola
and ignore the surfing turds.
Peripherally, if you take the time to stuff cotton wool up your nose,
there is the renaissance,
gargoyles in repose.
Pretty girls chinning crumbling window sills.
Perry Como crooning.
A strand of DNA showing off, curtsying,
vaguely remembering my ancestors days of slavery in Mitzrayim.
A novella performed in my arteries.
My internist prescribes,
I obey.
The pills are orange and yellow and a gruesome sort of flecked turquoise.
I wash them down with lukewarm water
and the eye at the back of my head winks..
Religious
I pray in the morning.
I drink at night.
Somewhere in between there is the dog barking
the genuflecting of authority figures.
The urge for fried food.
A notion of racial purity.
Beethoven with his ear smushed into the piano lid.
The first names of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
The ten plagues always carry I.D.
“Hi! My name is Locusts!”
The facsimile of God that all those meaty boys pray to in football season
Knows that repetition causes cancer..
And in the Garden of Eden it rains and rains.
You think you’re in Manchester.
I’m not a bit religious, except when it comes to taking my pills.
Dear Yahweh
Dear Yahweh, can’t wait to be a burden on my kids.
Long long time, they’ve cumbered me
So, soon they’ll deliver and carry
Bleach and clean and scrub-a-dub-dub.
And do it happily.
No Sun City for me. No old folks warehouse, please.
No special strangers tossing me
like some smelly old sack of shit.
Each must take turns putting me up
in a sunny parlor, so’s I don’t have to climb
to the top of the stairs. A nice
glimmering walk-in bath with handles installed
A minor cost….. Yours, of course.
The purpose of children is insurance
A girded codpiece against the testicle-kicks of mean daddy time
A guarantee. Insurance.
Yeah, that’s what kid s are all about!
Bring them up in your own image, knowing that they
Owe you and oughtn’t just farm you out
I’ve spent all the money on schooling and clothing.
Attended the ceremonies and soccer practices,
Cheered for you religiously at your games.
Knowing that, once you’re earning, you’ll be gone.
Only recreatable in photographic shrines,
Discount baby-sitting, birthday parties,
Christmas present competition and good Thanksgiving wine!
It’s been a blessing.
Really!
Now Lordy Lord Yahweh, dude.
I’m gonna be a burden on my children
Yes. And on my children’s children too.
