I'm shopping for a good death.
I have an unknown, but finite amount of time.
But I've yet to sort and list what a good death may be.
Precipitously quick, and unexpected would be nice.
Clear head pain management would be a god send,
Saying personalized goodbyes to family and friends
Ranks high.
I've read that 100 billion humans have thanotopically bridged that divide.
I pray that when the time comes
I end in the ranks of the top ten.

In 1947 I was born on a Thursday;
this year,
my 65 th,
falls on a Tuesday.
A "Fall"
from a 3 foot high bed
at 6:00 a.m. in April
has split my world
into a mirror universe
of can do
and can't yet.

It's in the bag
or is it?
The unmeasured liquids
that I've been drinking this morning,,
coffee, prune juice, cranberry, pill water
then the mandatory diuretic
taken at 6:00 a.m.,
a cath a ten,
lunch at twelve thirty,
and then a lap moat of **** at one!
A transfer board out of the wheelchair
onto the made bed.
Rocking 'n rolling off the wet pants,
rocking and rolling on a pair of dry slacks.
"****, ****, I hate this."

Mornings,
The blessed shroud of sleep lifts,
Ones usesless limbs
Have filled in the nocturn hours with mercury,
Not swift Olympian Mercury,
But the toxic fluid metal
That nearly weighs the same as lead.
A new day,
A new day
Weighs in
Without volitional choice.

Eventually all water drains to the sea,
and so to the body's waters drain to its urinary bladder.
But the bladder,
unlike the sea,
must be drained every few hours,
call it a normative ****** rhythm,
taken for granted, as it should be, by the functionally normal,
but the spine paralyzed
must be catherized
four, five six times a day.
**** breaks through an inserted tube,
to which I can personally report,
the ***** prefers piercing
then being pierced.

There are three B's
intimately connected to a spinal cord injury,
bowel, bladder, and blather.
The gut severed from the brain
is rudderless.
Both bowel and bladder require outside assistance
which brings in blather.
The care giver, the talker.
One time, in my case
a born again ****** searcher.
Not for ****
but for digital conversion.
My *** well in hand I heard the purr,
"Do you believe in Jesus?"

My arms wrap my body
as if I were a mummy
and in the way that mummy's are stiff,
so to my paralyzed carcass,
a living entombment of wishes
that wither by noon
then baled into flop sweat shivers
for the wet wash cloth
of the next day's care giver.