Against Dying

If the body is just a parable

About the body, if breath

Is a leash to hold the mind

Then staying alive should be

Easier than it is, most sick

Things become dead things

At twenty-four my liver was

Already covered in fatty

Rot my mother filled a tiny

Coffin with picture frames

I spent the year drinking

From test tubes, weeping

Wherever I went somehow

It happened wellness crept

Into me like a roach nibbling

Through an eardrum for

A time the half minutes

Of fire in my brainstem

Made me want to pull out

My spine but even those

Have become bearable, so,

How shall I live now?

In the unexpected present

I spent so long in a lover’s

Quarrel with my flesh

The peace seems over-

Cautious too-polite I say

Stop being cold or make

That blue bluer and it does.

We speak to each other

In this code where every word

Means obey I sit under

A poplar tree with a thermos

Of chamomile feeling

Useless as an oath against

Dying I put a sugar cube

On my tongue and

Swallow it like a pill