Elder cocoons
Crysalis Hospice
Heaves pounding war drums
Fables of eternal bridge
Bingo and television
zombie horde lunch hour
Tennis ***** play race car
down halls tarred with lost children
Abandoned wither liver spot wrists
Silk wrinkles
Pull like neck folds lifted
newborn simba kittens
casted into this kingdom
scientists culture control

climate but not the yellow wall
It's too high for a fit cyborg
intravenous barbed wire
Cathader Penetrating
illusions of escapism
except the prison wealthy
classically conditioned

trading ice cream like cigarettes
trading blood diseases like ramen packets
There is no planned parenthood
in old folks homes
There is no distribution of free condoms
In a facility where they without medication
When you're about to win the lottery

His last day requested to bed Nurse Christine
Wheelchair ridden fumbling to open
A shaker of Mrs. DASH
I reach to help him open the spice.
Growling and Sadistic he festered:
"Let the little boy do what he can do."

I sat down in my chair.
he had his nurse ala mode.
no one will fund a ****** dispensary for old folks home.
they wouldn't use them.

"He can't walk, he's on decline."
I was briefed as I clocked in.
an anxious robotic voice says
You have clocked in at 9:40pm
"When I get back from vacation He'll be dead"

I stand awkwardly at the landline phone and stare at him.
between us is the Clients bedroom doorway
The Client is asleep.

"When did he go to bed?," I say after a silence.
"Oh about a minute ago"
Breathing becomes fast and heavy from inside the room.

"I think it's a good time for you to go now"
I say, "It was nice to meet you."
"I'll be relieving you tomorrow morning at 8:30"

He leaves,
There is nothing relieving about this man
eager to back into each parking space
Lusting for his vacation in California
Caring for this helpless old man when I leave.

Architecture rivets as he walks down the hallway.
footsteps echo off the empty fireplaces and yellow wallpaper  
no tumbleweed in the darkness outside
only snow wet and black tar.
as he looks in the mirror his wax smile fades into his hairline

I shiver in the recliner at my journal.
I look at the man sleeping past the doorway.
This is my job now.
That man is my future
Destined for a Hospice Heart

The inevitable silence fills every thought.
Anguish oozes from each pore in my body.
Torment lays thick and heavy on every breath.
Death is making his way through the mortal realm to place his icy grip on my life.
To **** a part of me, but leave enough so that he may strike again.
Tedious pain courses through my body, gnashing it's teeth on already frayed nerves.
Hell is here and now, cleverly disguised as just another step in the process of life.
I have seen the demons behind the masks.
Their hateful eyes burn like the hell fires that now replace my once loving heart.

Where I worked, I was quite content
To help people was most relevant

My favorite was a young-little boy
Everyday held utmost joy

His smile was wide and missing teeth
Covered by curled lips acting as a sheath

His hair was once orange and red
Replaced by brown he said he wanted mine instead

He'd run his hands through his artificial curls
Excited he spun his two wheels in whirls

I'd push him down the hallway in his chair
His loving parents waiting to meet him there

They smiled every time they said goodbye
When the mother turned I could hear her start to cry

I took him back to his room
When out the window were stars and moon

Every night he asked me not to leave
I would stay there until he sleep

Most nights he'd wake up in pain
His tears for release a permanent stain

This boy suffered an incurable disease
All he wanted was a sense of ease

Multiple needles stuck in his arm
I.V. fluids doing no good nor harm

One night instead of asking me to stay
Instead he asked if I'd take him away

To a place where he could feel no hurt
A place where all was new and divert

I stood in silence within the door
A hesitant smile I gave once more

Go to sleep and when you wake
Somewhere new you will stay

That was the last smile I saw him grin
Before eager sleep took over him

I fought the tears as I held the plug
No more pain for my little bug

Questioning if what I did was right
But the young-little boy has peaceful sleep tonight

If “dying is an art,” you do not do it well.  I do not
have words, do not have thoughts; there is nothing inside
of me anymore.  I am vacant, hollow, and if this is what
time travel feels like I do not want any part of it.  Racing
past the stars, past the planets, past Andromeda's spiraling, galactic force,
I am light-years ahead and then light-years behind—I am
                two years                    too late.                  

You cannot know, you will not know, how
Auriga is waiting in the sky to whisk you
                                                                 away,                away,                            away.

Th­e bubbling of your oxygen sounds like the water fountains
you used to pass as a child, but there are no pennies at the bottom
of this.  And I wonder, with your eyes closed, if you feel like you
are swimming.  Barely treading water, fighting to keep your head above,
choking on salt and brine as you try to kick your feet, try to
swim to Lake Michigan’s shoreline.  I want
Poseidon to spit you out of sea like a cork, want
Neptune to come alive through the mosaics of your bathroom and
lead you away from the great, black, wave of stars that is
breaking and crashing and barely brushing your bare feet.

Some fish were meant to drown.  You are
not one of them.  Pisces is meant to swim                   forever.

This time machine has dropped me back into my nightmare again,
but it is not only mine, it’s yours.  I am trying to read
the constellations, trying to map the planets, trying to figure out
the moon cycles, but I fear that this is a language I had learned once
and tried to forget—we are now digging each others graves.  
The nurse in blue, the doctor in white, the sun in gold, and you,
red as dead and clotted blood, have merged into a new dialect
that does not mirror what I know the way the
Gemini twins mimic one another in the cosmos. (I think
                                 I have lost my ability to speak with angels
and this terrifies me.)

Is God whispering the secrets of the world into your ear yet?  Is Jesus
showing you how to be holy?  Are you tearing the bread for communion
and feeding it to the birds?  Are you taking shots from His heavenly blood,
getting drunk off the possibility of closing your eyes, leaning back, and
watching Perseus fight your battles for you?  
                                                        Do you want to be a constellation, too?

I am eighty miles away from you, but it feels more like
eighty light-years.  I am watching you through someone else’s eyes and
choking myself with my own hands as I try to show you
what you mean to me.  My hands are cracked and bleeding from
pounding them against the wall you constructed around yourself, but you
don’t have control over that wall anymore, do you?

You are too young to ride Pegasus in the night sky, too young to
build your own wings, too young to fall and drown like Icarus.  You
know how to swim.  You are learning how to fly.  There is no
reason for you to shake God’s hand yet.  Put the halo down—
                                                           ­                                                you are not ready.