Prescription
It has become a ritual: to say
And follow: in the morning
You go past the monastery,
By night you return along the river.
Nothing will change if you don’t
Follow this. When you saw the holed
Snow-blessed rag flutter on a dry poplar
You aborted your mission.
You returned to your ritual.
When the nurse woke you at 5
The cemetery overlooking your
Enclosure’s window was already spitting,
Repeatedly, on a marked spot of an exposed brain.
It had become a ritual: the cemetery asking you
To turn into a rag. This was not to wipe the brain.
The afterlife is only everything you ever wanted
To hear from everyone, embodied, being poured
Relentlessly, until it too becomes unbearable,
You muttered to the nurse.
If I don’t turn into the rag today then…
This is a threat, a horse threatening his mane.
I’m sorry, this is not your prescription, she replied.
And slammed the drawer shut.
It has become a ritual. To say:
If you are real then get me out of here.
You replying: I don’t exist, therefore you do.
The Fear of Apricots
For Arvind
Picking the fallen apricots from the lawn
At first I am mindless, almost, turning
Them over between my fingers–
And in a single glance throw the blemished ones
away, keeping the smooth-skinned tight in my fist.
Because they are premature and small I can choose
Until both my hands are full. The crushed ones,
Their light scent of consequences return me to being
Afraid. The natural state, one-winged bird of wonder
That is some organ within. Do I even want to be over
My fear of apricots? Afraid of having carelessly
Thrown away the spotted ones, afraid
Of holding the perfect ones in my hands, now
Too self-aware of making choices, of this desperate
Need to choose, too self-aware of the inevitable.
There are no negotiations to be made.
Like throwing away what I see as perfect, picking
Only the pocked, scarred, punctured ones, or trying
a yellowed truce. It's unalterable now. And rising up
My head hits the bird feed, scattering their food
across the grass. What we call brokenness is
The necessary river, you had said once, its form
Isn't solid, but the shape of remembering something
We call the river flows right past the seabuckthorn fence
Of my home. So long of everything still so long
To everything. Both brokenness and river so close.
Always: bright afraid like a blessing, so so
Afraid I can't stop picking.
Strand
The forecast calls for more no.
And when you woke at dawn–
The thing licking the leftover vanilla
Off your terror–saw a strand
Of the nurse’s hair on your gown…
What are you hiding?
You were afraid they’d ask
While drawing your blood.
So you didn’t even touch it
Or pick it up between your fingers.
You left it, took her name once,
Then asked yourself: if I don’t
Tell the miracle it is one will someone
Come and say to me: you seem to have
Found it, you can have it?
And when you cry after the doctors leave,
Inside the children’s ward six floors
Below you, a boy will sit up and mumble
To himself: Today…today my father will…
Then pause until you are finished
