A pillar, a pill box
color coordinated to days of the weak and frail —
thins my hair and blood, and floods
my liver and kidneys —
and settles in a pool of bile and shredded
lining.
Today is Tuesday — Sunday at worst —
at best a Monday, but the kind
only that strokes itself into noontime
and high tide, and sunset, with
rattling pills and time.
Old sir, let me sink this fang-needle
into your flab.
Abrupt
and press
flat — squeeze.
You’ll wince. Perhaps you’ll pull away
so drops of clear tears will fumble
down the beads of your pores
It is such a flat decline – and age
is something ironic. Something
stale and robust like tusks
being grounded into ash and dust —
then splashed and rusted with itself
to blame.
Pills.
By the time of old age, I will
refuse them
I will welcome sickness and death
I will go blind and deaf
I will limp from injury — blame
my defective bones.
But Pills — No —
I will take no weekly regimen.
I will corner no day of the week, no time of the day —
And I will have no pill box —
No syringe, no refrigerated tears —
Because like those before me — I will
not make it that far.
And if I do — Sometimes
I pray I do —
but if
I do —
I will punish myself for it.