Imagine an overused sickroom,
an army hospital in a war zone:
the reek of sulfur and saltpeter overpowering sweet rotting meat,
a periodic shocking light of casual bombardment
reveals brass colored walls.
And, and, and ...
the noises—too many to catalogue
or differentiate.
A fever feels better,
opening a dream flower—
transfiguration follows death, we know this,
now. We know colors, liquid figures
so familiar somehow.
Isn't dying a familiar act?
The nurse laving ice water
on my puckered brow should excite me
(bedraggled, blood-smudged,
her hair loose, lips slightly parted
from fatigue or an indisguisible loathing for decay).
Think: in this given moment
five billion people are doing something else.
Even those also dying are dying in a different way
without ice water.
"Quel dommage," you'd say, Liesl,
making the bed of a morning. "What're the rich folks doing?"
The sun hot and blinding through the east windows
The room so white, the sheets green, your brown eyes
never averted
aromas of grass, exhaust, drying ***
where is it all?
where does it go?
what brings it here
this polluted room
this anti place
this hole where a stomach used to be
resides a memory of a stomach
recalling hunger
as a good thing to be assuaged with pleasure
Nurse, close your mouth before your soul escapes
segment of a long, 'component' poem, meant to remain unfinished and open to later insertions
