I am in coda, running
down the clock during
an interval of delay.
Enduring the seeming
ceaselessness, the
persistence of life.
Between now and then:
three doses a day,
they tell me,
at regular intervals
and with water.
Then I wait.
Meat goes and goes
until it won’t. The body
decomposes from
the inside out—did
you know? God’s
best joke and not
even funny at all.
But until the end:
three doses a day,
they tell me, at regular
intervals and with water.
Then I will wait.
“Suck it up, son,”
they say and then
hand the brown bottle over.
(1998)
