Scourge and succour: The body lies here, but am I still? Clutch the ________ where the phantom pains. Kill it, or soothe it.

*

The stillness of him, as grammar. Still the same face and eyes. (Comes and goes) The same rancid smell of urine. (Windows closed) Still the same breaking leg. (Luck's running out) Still the beats. (Face the music) The smell of shit. (On my hand) Still the jitters. (Still the jitters)

*

Still. Twitch. Zilch.

*

Feed and breed. Sleep and shit. Window opens and door closes. Pop out and up in smoke. A parataxis of items in no particular order.

*

Then: Then takes the chicken-hearted out when least expects it. And then is back. Cluck. Cluck. Cluck. Pop back to reality, then fucks it all up and for a while shutters up and there's that too. Chicken feed. You've sucked me dry. Then. Shit.

*

Father, all eventual departures depend on it: None we could salvage, or seize, or sum up in poultry, milligrams or mathematical equations.

*

As in approaching a painting, leaving takes time:

In the foreground, open ______ that fester at the edge. One melts and will not _____. Another _________ red and spluttering, or yellow and sticky. That will not dry up on the bed sheet. Wake up, Father. Until a _______ later…

*

What the living are left with:

Sudden pop-up windows

Rorschach inkblot on the bed sheet

The sheet replaced by a blue shower curtain

Prescriptions, diagnoses, dosages, tablespoons, teaspoons, drug ampoules, hospital bills

Cobwebs at the corner of the room

*

In a dream, coiling back into you: Through colons and capillaries, into lungs, into pump, into marrow and then here's a new boil, coming up. Coming up, through days hot and freakin' humid, sometimes a cool, afternoon wash-over, but mostly dull and without a voluntary thrust, the body's grown slowly into the role. Before rolling away in bed between sleep and wide-eyed right in front of us, leaving what?

A bungled line?

Skid marks?

Wedgies?

Missing subjects?

If only
was so obvious.
Accursed and stumbling
forward, or marooned on slow, shifting sands, but will be fine. We will be. Always have been for thousands of years. Before you and me and all this crap. How the whole rumpus just rubs itself in his face without him knowing it, leaving a lingering suspension…

*

The morning rang and the end of someone was a line he doesn't know anymore. Soon, the stops called once and for all.

*

Before: he falls back into a brand new aluminum wheelchair, watching clouds mynahs and television from the piss-soaked bed and it's raining outside and he's laughing, erupting like a strange, uncontrollable laxative.

*

Contemplate a shade:

Urine on the floor. On the mattress.
Banana droppings on chest.
Mush, undigested and spat out.

*

Two sides of the law of gravity:

Collapse. Hands outstretched. Or wound up around neck like a baby. Make it easy. Just vanish into thin.

Hold back. Laugh. Stiffen. A tug. A muscle pull. That jerk.

*

Laughter the antidote during washing:

Scrub. Hose down and laugh. Tickle, tickle. And asking where is the three-in-one commode with the waste-diverting capability when we need it. And laugh.

*

The knees give way first. The building starts buckling. He drops and lifts himself (but doesn't get up). The eyes are glazed over (the cataracts). His hand jitters and I still him. It's okay. Knowing that all we can do is strip the faux-leather upholstery, re-position the futon bed, till the padi fields, unravel the weft, laugh or just shut the door and watch Grey's Anatomy, but not stall the pitter-patter of the December rain on the air-conditioner outside can only mean one thing

*

Till:

A cashbox.

Or an unstratified, unconsolidated load of boulders, gravel, sand, mud and unearthed memories, deposited by the melting or movement of a glacier.

*

Till:

None of this, none of you
would be here when I come to