Explore Poems: Health & Illness

Is this the last time I’ll admire the guys
in their neon-yellow slickers, guiding us
to our parking spots…

           my body at the water’s edge of opioid comfort
under the brain’s night sky

           rounding the blue curve …

After the stroke our father lost the word
                                                            light switch
                                                            asked me to
          press the wall so a world       could                 open…

In Lima, my mother screams from her bed and from a garden
and in the parlor of her nursing home, and…

I’m consuming myself,
  my doctor says, and I get
the urge each time I lift
  a fork. How it rattles
with…

Because why not? Why not take the smashed pinecone 
of my life, render it in purple? Why not dream of…

Kung-Fu, a couch, and I might reach
emptiness tonight, stuck on that Midwest
hoo-doo, counting cemetery…

The zoo is tough terrain; hilly.
I wheel as fast as I can —
then Mum shouts ‘Keep up!’
I stop. ‘Hand me…

The angle of the sun does not confuse them—
once the bees find the rosemary, they cannot
forget it is…

Odio la violencia
Así sea hermosa y moderna
Le temo a la ciencia
Cuando hace realidad mis peores sueños…

Where wor{l}d & the tangible object of that wor{l}d collide. My brain thinks traces & again, Singh’s words at the back of my throat, The unconscious is the most evasive archive of all, yet is pulsing right there inside you....

A Mass is something  you say on Good Friday,
after we walk the Stations  for the last time.
The radiologist will
tell me the same thing or not:
“Appears to be a carcinoma.”

Appears?

I think about division. How we splice & splice & splice, mentally & anatomically. A cell becomes cells becomes exponential cells. A gorging. Always, our becoming; our something tangled in multiplicity. How the body yearns to rewild from behind muscle...

I hate violence
Even if it’s beautiful and modern 
I fear science
When it makes my worst dreams come true…

the sign read
HARMACY after
Frank shot
the P out

Beneath me, a bright pool of  blood
like the puddle of  hardened sugar around

a candied apple. The color too sanguine
for the following ache—a cyst. Diameter

of a new crab apple—chronic, the doctor said,
lucky we caught it early; a risk of sepsis. Lucky,

the...

Death no wild thing
and you a boy,
Max.

One night in your room
(or body)
a forest grew

and the walls
(or cells) became
transparent

because brightness
invites
transparency, I guess.

Then a little boat
to hospital smells.
Doctors called

the forest cancer,
not obscuring leaves.
And you a boy.

You say:
“Why can’t people use the word
courage

instead...

in the waiting room, I watched women snap
rubber bands around their wrists, running

their hands through…

Work out. Ten laps.
Chin ups. Look good.

Steam room. Dress warm.
Call home. Fresh air.

Eat right. Rest well.
Sweetheart. Safe sex.

Sore throat. Long flu.
Hard nodes. Beware.

Test blood. Count cells.
Reds thin. Whites low.

Dress warm. Eat well.
Short breath. Fatigue.

Night sweats. Dry cough.
Loose stools. Weight loss.

Get...

The children in the life:
Another telephone call. Another man gone.
How many pages are left in my diary?
Do I have enough pencils? Enough ink?
I count on my fingers and toes the past kisses,
the incubating years, the months ahead.

Thousands. Many thousands
Many thousands...