there's a fat plastic tube taped sub-clavian carrying ruby fluid
from a clear bag that hangs overhead
draining mysteries of modern alchemy
into your body, its lifetime measured, silent droplets
inside a hermetically sealed hourglass we can only watch, not touch
but they don't change you

by protocol your nurse wore her nitrile gloves doubled-up
lest she get this stuff on her fingers - it's toxic -
advised you to flush the toilet twice,
making certain to eliminate stray molecules that might
be exposed to sitting innocents

i should be in the next chair, holding your hand

we might share complimentary raspberry danish,
stare at a silent TV on the wall
as it broadcasts flashing pictures of calamity from
the latest war or storm savaged country
but we’ve been living there for years already
our home not populous enough to draw serious media attention;  

we’d wrestle sips of anemic coffee from free paper cups
yours going into a red can when you've finished
because that brilliant color insinuates itself into saliva, eventually
as it does to blood and *****;
i could take mine home

i'd read moving captions at the bottom of the screen
to know what's going on in the images
while you'd feign interest in this tedious world and remind me, again,
how life is tenuous

ask me the name of that dripping liquid just to see if i was listening,
an appellation alien - if life were fair it would be easier
but i’d get the pronunciation wrong
maybe it could be a French word i remember reading to you from a menu in Paris
we might paste it thickly, soft cheese onto torn chunks of baguette
savored between sips of cabernet from long stemmed glasses;
pronounce it “good” as if we could own it

****** and gigolette -
we’d stolen the whole earth that moment,
grinning like a pair of cat burglars at a cafe table where i'd held your hand
but here we are, old again, bitter enemies
for the moment, i'm glad for Ativan and Motrin,
the only names i can remember from your tray of saltines and ginger ale

instead, i'm sitting alone at home with cigarettes and bourbon,
more congenial poisons
staring at a white, unmoving ceiling, pretending I’m working
we're like that, you know, tug and tow - where you go,
i'm heart-bound to follow
Doctor Jack insists i'll live much longer, a little sicker after
i might adjust expectations for a worn-out liver, headaches,
possible blood pressure elevations; short warnings written on the label

while yours smile, with more tricks than carnival barkers
they say, now, a handful - or only two - more tricks up their sleeves,
the grinning, white-coated thieves
Jack smiles, pats my hand, a warm man

smoking is prohibited in the clinic
i'd hang from the window ledge to get the next nicotine fix,
but it won't open to alive, mowed grass outside -
these proceedings always sequester hidden behind curtains in private,
a secret art of undertakers doctoring flesh to look still-living,
love making in mid-evening darkness we've long forgotten

i’d draw deeply chemically-treated air, forget it’s now happening
remind myself a paternal need to stay healthy for survivors
while trying to avoid living in midst of your horrors,
a preoccupation that subsumes my mind

if you’re right - and you always are - how could i bury you?
when the dog died,
i dug her hole in our garden myself, deep through tree roots to bedrock,
then beyond, depth a measure of devotion;
carved a stone with my own fingernails, her name in a crossed heart
and we two cried like shivering babies
as we shoveled all the dirt back in to cover her

these are words of a weak man, selfish ******* that i am
and really, all of life's slumped over in my lap right now,
just this little girl sleeping
but i should be in the next chair
if you'd only let me sit there
again