laying in a hospital bed.
gown drawn to my toes.
a small ****** box tv stuffed away in the corner.
all sick and pale.
tissues and chocolate pudding flooding the side table.
i have tubes running through my veins.
******* the life out of me,
isn’t exactly pretty, is it?

would you sit by my bed?
would you sit for hours on end playing endless card games?
or would you do what everyone else does?
run away.
freaked out, scared.
running away from the problem.
from the thing that causes them stress.
causes them to spiral,
to break down.
i am that thing.
so with all this weighing on you,
like bricks on your shoulders,
would you visit me?

Lying in my bed,

I saw a house being build --


for after my life.

Searching for Galileo,
    the race to be first home,

In a sea of patients
    we climb the probability tree,
    walk upon the shore collecting
      memory shells,

We win the little wars,
     lose the big fight,

These windows are breathing apparatus,
     this ceiling, a blur of tungsten sky,
     rain, tears, weep,

To rest near to you,
     the technicolor sleep,
     and I died with you,

All farewells are sudden.

In room 214B
As far as I can see
Stuck in my mind,
And my bed’s binds,
Lacking mental affinity.

Respiration is a curse.
My mind just makes it worse.
It creates these tiers
Of endless fears,
And inspires my every verse.

I know my life is ending,
My heart has not the mending
It needs to live,
And only gives
Away the time I’m spending.

Can’t waste my breath on crying.
All hope is only lying.
I hear my fate,
Outside he waits,
As the strings of fate are tying.

So in room 214B
I’ll know, by Death’s decree,
I’m out of time,
So I’ll write my rhymes,
Awaiting my darkest infinity.
A void that steals my humanity
In room 214B.

To crave,
Wails of agony, voices soaked in terror?
Call after call, message after message.
Care, love, sympathy?
Succor, surveillance, support?
Tear after tear, hands shaking and grasping?
Pity, solace, warmth?

To receive,
Levigating guilt, being disintegrated.
Evanescensing from reality.
Blood clotting and drying.
Those who are paid to give care,
Who seem as though sympathy;
Hadn't glazed over their eyes in decades.
A room so cold and sterile,
That not even the warmth of my breath
Could stop my bones from shivering under my skin.
Desolating abandonment,
Hums of fluorescent lights,
In chorus with sobs of despondency

It isn't what I wanted.
But it is what I deserved.

they say that some ages feel closer to others.
that memories spiral inside of you
instead of existing on a linear plane.

i can feel the younger years slowly tighten
toward the centre as a i age,
suffocate it until i can no longer remember

a final breath drawn
before a sobbing goodbye.

hurting, so that it can make itself known
one last time
before it slips into the void.

maybe that is why twelve feels like yesterday.
when I was haunted by the ghosts
that lingered in those hospital wards.

and maybe why thirteen feels like today,
when i’m praying for a miracle
to be given to him.

and maybe why fourteen feels like tomorrow
preparing to dig soil to cover him
not knowing that it would never get the chance to touch his skin.

i'm reliving all of the pain,
the aching in my chest,
the short breaths of panic.

it all exists inside me
coiling around my heart and
suffocating.

all the anxiety growing from seeds planted
all those years ago.

and i keep telling myself that it is alright
that he lived
but my mind doesn’t know any of this

because its still
twelve
and thirteen
and fourteen

and it is still hurting.

I have a special interest in telling about my colonoscopy.
The doc cheerful, secure in his specialty, colon cancer being
the second leading cause of cancer death after lung tumors.
They can snip the precancerous polyps right out of you during the test.
At first the doc gave me the statistics but having paid 25 bucks for this
      interview
I decided to make him explain the science. He was most comfortable
describing the physical architecture of adenomatous v. hyperplastic
      polyps
but what about cell structure I said. He was vague about genes and
      hormones,
I could have been chatting with an Electrolux salesman.
I wasn’t worried although my *** was burning.
Everybody dies, everybody, even Whitman and Emerson, so I browse
      models for dying—
mine are middlebrow, saddlebow—John Wayne in The Shootist, Paul
      Newman in Hombre—or hagiography
Plath her head stuck in an oven, Hemingway who ate his shotgun.
Anyway I was upbeat flirting with the nurse, a muse who has seen it all
      before,
acting tough, which isn’t actually an act
you do your prep and say your prayers.
I thought I’d be in and out **** as you probably already know
the prep for this procedure is worthy of Gandhi. A day of fasting,
clear fluids only, and constant voiding.
You arrive at the hospital one spiritual chicken.
I reflected it can’t hurt, lose a little weight, remember who you are
without so much **** and flesh between you and the natural world.
Snipping polyps is like taking electrons to a lower quantum energy level,
      nearer the nucleus, with fasting and ****** abstinence.
The art of total presence and abstinence, dependence on the Other for
      future existence.