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This is the book of three
Diseases. Close it, and you’re caught Running from my life, nearer its end now
That you’ve come so far for a man
Sick in his blood, left lung, and mind. I think of him mornings
I wake panting like a runner after His best time. He sweats. He stops
Facing what burned. The house That graced this open lot was
A red brick. Children played there—
Two boys, their father actually Came home. Mama cooked As if she
had a right to
The fire in her hands, to the bread I ate Before I saw doctors who help me
Fool you into believing
I do anything other than the human thing. We breathe until we don’t.
Every last word is contagious.
This is what our dying looks like. You believe in the sun. I believe
I can’t love you. Always be closing,
Said our favorite professor before He let the gun go off in his mouth. I
turned 29 the way any man turns In his sleep, unaware of the earth
Moving beneath him, its plates in Their places, a dated disagreement.
Let’s fight it out, baby. You have Only so long left—a man turning In
his sleep—so I take a picture.
I won’t look at it, of course. It’s
His bad side, his Mr. Hyde, the hole In a husband’s head, the O
Of his wife’s mouth. Every night,
I take a pill. Miss one, and I’m gone. Miss two, and we’re through. Hotels
Bore me, unless I get a mountain view, A room in which my cell won’t work,
And there’s nothing to do but see
The sun go down into the ground That cradles us as any coffin can.
Dubbed undetectable, I can’t kill The people you touch, and I can’t
Blur your view
Of the pansies you’ve planted Outside the window, meaning
I can’t kill the pansies, but I want to.
I want them dying, and I want To do the killing. I want you To heed
that I’m still here
Just beneath your skin and in Each organ
The way anger dwells in a man
Who studies the history of his nation. If I can’t leave you
Dead, I’ll have
You vexed. Look. Look Again: show me the colors Of your
flowers now.
