fantasticdamage

epitaph

my heart's done pumping
old blood, sending directions
to ventricles, urging veins
to work better. they're on strike
and i don't blame them
but i've been hired to investigate.

i put on the sleuth costume:
an updated sherlock holmes (more spacey).
i'm back home, gnawing
on lamb chop bones, narrowly miss
my father's hand slamming me into brick -
a few gin & tonics in him.

i think of the mars bar,
the walt whitmans i order -
it's a pseudo gin gimlet. now
i'm in an SUV, listening
to my mother sneak a fuck
in the backseat with an antiques dealer.

he'll die of a seizure
in a few years; she'll go grey
and slit her wrists. before she dies
i'll publish my thesis:
how we become our parents
or their opposite.

then i'll go design my house minimal:
1950s aesthetic, high-end art deco -
everything metallic or synthetic,
rothko prints and neutron bomb portraits.
i thought i could coax the future,
bring it sooner by following instructions.

but this ramshackle construction must stop
somewhere: i'm at the clinic, listening
to an IV brimming with life, tube-tied babies
breast feeding AIDS patients alive. my heart
braeks when it murmurs too loudly;
feet keep tapping, i wonder

where's my spot on the list
for a red plastic transplant.