Today brings an automatic poem inspired by reading some surrealists and feeling too blah to really blog, yet compelled to share anyway. The TLDR version: I feel old today.
My heart is beating lately
like I did something more than just sit up
after a nap. The tea I’m drinking
changes the way I feel,
my mouth is coated, my heart
attuned to the dose of too much:
food and drink and tea. Sleep
rare compared to a short walk
and then more food and drink and tea.
One doctor says to visit more, demands
we meet to discuss my blood.
Another doctor warned that
the American diet would do me in,
complimented my mostly vegetarian
ways, salmon notwithstanding,
and that hardly means I’m off the cheese
though every bite feels like sin
and pales against what I downplayed
to doctor number two: the time it takes
to drain seven hundred and fifty milliliters.
Doctor number three cut a mole
from my shoulder, said not a word
more than hello, all scalpel and out
the door to excise another growth.
I appreciated the taciturn quickness.
Doctor number four gave me meds
after a dog took a bit of my leg,
a bite through denim
left a gash, bruise, and set the dominos
falling, falling. My summer
was antibiotics and rash, stomach
cramps and not quite myself,
thoughts given to better days never
had of muscles and taut and
tree logs split.
Doctor the fifth felt my back
buttocks, leg. More meds—I
couldn’t name them, only
know they did not agree.
I dread doctor six, the devil’s number.
I see him in weeks where my
days are breathing and hearing
my body sing a song worse than
scratched vinyl aching to be.
