Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.

Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.

Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.

Overts and lies
Condescention, I
Noticed when you
thought I couldn't
You dont have to
Come here and smile
and extend a hand
to me with
false camaraderie
Don't bother
Feigning delight
When I'm ushered in
With the dawn of
some blistering
Winter morning
And when you wish
to spin golden tales
of grandiousity, refrain
Continue the day

And leave me out of it.

for Wallace Stevens*

1.
Just as my fingers on these keys
Make data, so the self-same sounds
Of a CEO’s fingers make me a data, too.

Thus it is the spirit that feels,
Here in this cubicle, desiring—through
Excel spreadsheets, email, a deadline—

Itself.

2.
In the pale glow of a Xerox machine
The body stood.
It sought
The hum of Nature,
But, finding only synthetics,
Sighed with demur,
So barren grew its mood.

3.
They wondered why the invisible child wept
In a security without which Death’s adept;
It could not say,
So convinced were they,
Safety was the dream of a Happiness that slept.

i thought of ants and how they colonize
and remembered the importance of my breath.
offset the thinning path
were pink and purple blossoms.
blue jays appeared to
keep the cardinals mindful
while the thaw of spring dispelled
the white curse of winter.
i watched their dance on broken twigs
and their consciousness budding forefront,
i thought about the importance to their dance
and forgot about my breath.

masses of aluminum color
regarded my need for space.
offset the flattened tar,
my chains churned in earnest
while synthetics fought the earth and
purple blossoms danced in their own way.
i am guilty of fighting in that war,
guerrilla tribes of rubbered feet,
propelled by accepting neglect.
these bodies are filled with meters
to measure varying complications,
none of which are relevant in our time.
but still i continued to fight and dance
and remember my need for breath
while the jays and cardinals
danced amongst the pink and purple blossoms

budding full of consciousness,
disregarding our foolish guerrilla fight.