Show me how it all ends with
match-stick sailors in paper
boats on an origami sea.
Christ tamed a tempest
and danced upon the waves.
It is not the deep I fear.
It's pissing myself at 4 AM,
clicking the morphine button
and coming up empty, watching
them take my toes, one-by-one.
I want to believe in miracles.
I want a fat- bottomed nurse
who calls me Sugar makes
a sign of the cross on the
keel of my brow, tells me
"No more water. Ice chips.
Float with me now, Sugar.
Ain't got time for this."
Hospice
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- Posts: 2692
- Joined: 03 Jun 2016, 21:03
Re: Hospice
Good one, Ken.
These are the most powerful lines:
It's pissing myself at 4 AM,
clicking the morphine button
and coming up empty, watching
them take my toes, one-by-one.
These are the most powerful lines:
It's pissing myself at 4 AM,
clicking the morphine button
and coming up empty, watching
them take my toes, one-by-one.
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- Posts: 1619
- Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17
Re: Hospice
Thanks Bob. I don't fear death. I fear dying.
I watched both parents shrivel and wither.
It's a hard thing. I hope I die from a massive coronary after being slapped by the nurse for some off-color comment.
Thank you
I watched both parents shrivel and wither.
It's a hard thing. I hope I die from a massive coronary after being slapped by the nurse for some off-color comment.
Thank you
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- Posts: 2154
- Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57
Re: Hospice
Hi Kenneth,
Your poem is on my short-list.
I can relate - Yes, a tough experience indeed.
However, I believe I was learning from my parents' dying experience; thus, they were teaching me, even up to the time of their taking leave.
This visual reoccurred to me as I read your poem:
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset ... yr43RXYf3Q
And in your comment to Bob, I find a prose-poem, or if aligned, the lines of a poem.
Maybe a companion piece; or maybe that image of being slapped by the nurse could appear at the close of your hospice poem.
Michael (MV)
Your poem is on my short-list.
I can relate - Yes, a tough experience indeed.
However, I believe I was learning from my parents' dying experience; thus, they were teaching me, even up to the time of their taking leave.
This visual reoccurred to me as I read your poem:
https://artsandculture.google.com/asset ... yr43RXYf3Q
And in your comment to Bob, I find a prose-poem, or if aligned, the lines of a poem.
Maybe a companion piece; or maybe that image of being slapped by the nurse could appear at the close of your hospice poem.
Michael (MV)
Kenneth2816 wrote: ↑08 Jul 2021, 01:24Thanks Bob. I don't fear death. I fear dying.
I watched both parents shrivel and wither.
It's a hard thing. I hope I die from a massive coronary after being slapped by the nurse for some off-color comment.
Thank you