Science in its tedium reveals
that each spirit we spirit
ganks a solid half hour from
our life spans.
Or so says my doctor, a watery,
Jesus-eyed man, and hard to suffer
with his well-intended scrips for yoga
and neti pots, notably stingy with the better
drugs, in situ here amongst the disinfected
toys dreadful in their plastic baskets.
Above his head, the flayed men of medical
illustration are nailed for something like
décor. The eyeball scheme is best,
with its wondrous Canal of Schlemm,
first favorite of all weirdly named
eponymous body parts. It’s just a splotch
of violet on the diagram, but without which
our aqueous humours would burst
their meshy dams and overflow. Tears,
idle tears…so sad, so fresh the days
that are no more…is what I quote to him
as he thumps my back with his tiny
doctor’s’ tomahawk. But he’s used to me.
We have an understanding. What he
means to miser, I’ve come to spend
most lavishly. And I feel fortunate again,
to be historically shaky in the maths,
enough to avoid making an easy sum
of my truly happy hours, or nights curled
sulfurous on my side, a priced-to-sell
shrimp boiling in anxious sleep.
If we’re lucky, it’s always a terrible time
to die. Better the privilege of booze
than the whim of one more shambolic
butcher shelling peasants in a wood,
our world’s long spree of Caesars
starting wars to pay their bills
in any given era’s Rome. Turns out,
Lord Alfred’s stomach did for him,
and he died thirsty, calling for more opium.
Free of the exam room now, I spot the same
tattered goldfish in his smeary bowl
beside the door where he’s glugged along
for years, a mostly failed distraction
for poxed or broken children. I raise my fin
to him, celebrate the poison we’re all
swimming in, remembering the way
you say cheers in Hungarian:
Isten Isten, meaning, in translation,
“I’m a god. You’re a god.”
