Hospice

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Kenneth2816
Posts: 1619
Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17

Hospice

#1 Post by Kenneth2816 » 07 Jul 2021, 07:52

Show me how it all ends with
match-stick sailors in paper
boats on an origami sea.

Christ tamed a tempest
and danced upon the waves.
It is not the deep I fear.

It's pissing myself at 4 AM,
clicking the morphine button
and coming up empty, watching

them take my toes, one-by-one.
I want to believe in miracles.
I want a fat- bottomed nurse

who calls me Sugar makes
a sign of the cross on the
keel of my brow, tells me

"No more water. Ice chips.
Float with me now, Sugar.
Ain't got time for this."

BobBradshaw
Posts: 2683
Joined: 03 Jun 2016, 21:03

Re: Hospice

#2 Post by BobBradshaw » 07 Jul 2021, 18:09

Good one, Ken.

These are the most powerful lines:

It's pissing myself at 4 AM,
clicking the morphine button
and coming up empty, watching

them take my toes, one-by-one.

Kenneth2816
Posts: 1619
Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17

Re: Hospice

#3 Post by Kenneth2816 » 08 Jul 2021, 01:24

Thanks Bob. I don't fear death. I fear dying.

I watched both parents shrivel and wither.
It's a hard thing. I hope I die from a massive coronary after being slapped by the nurse for some off-color comment.

Thank you

Michael (MV)
Posts: 2154
Joined: 18 Apr 2005, 04:57

Re: Hospice

#4 Post by Michael (MV) » 24 Jul 2021, 22:12

Hi Kenneth,

Your poem is on my short-list.


I can relate - Yes, a tough experience indeed.
However, I believe I was learning from my parents' dying experience; thus, they were teaching me, even up to the time of their taking leave.


This visual reoccurred to me as I read your poem:

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset ... yr43RXYf3Q


And in your comment to Bob, I find a prose-poem, or if aligned, the lines of a poem.
Maybe a companion piece; or maybe that image of being slapped by the nurse could appear at the close of your hospice poem.


8)

Michael (MV)
 

 
Kenneth2816 wrote:
08 Jul 2021, 01:24
Thanks Bob. I don't fear death. I fear dying.

I watched both parents shrivel and wither.
It's a hard thing. I hope I die from a massive coronary after being slapped by the nurse for some off-color comment.

Thank you
 
 
 
 

Kenneth2816
Posts: 1619
Joined: 01 Jun 2008, 09:17

Re: Hospice

#5 Post by Kenneth2816 » 02 Aug 2021, 08:15

Thanks Michael

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