room 207, bed B.

 

 

 

And what to do with the contestant

who fucked up all his answers on Jeopardy?

Call me, I am home after Cinnamon Toast Crunch

and Savannah Guthrie and her baby bump,

this week of the blood moon. Was it me

looking thru the eclipse machine

we made of cardbord and watercolor

in grade school? The ones that left you

blinded all day with nothing but failed

stories of the darkness you witnessed

but didn't.

 

In the ICU, the sun spilled

thru the mysterious power that all may feel

and no philosophy can explain. An embankment

of wires and valves; of pedestrian legs

and faces navigating chairs like a sea of

chalk whales. I drank my Mountain Dew

until my feet were the size of Olive Oils:

dear blessed soul

torn between two lovers.

Skinny but beautifully

damaged.

 

You have to want to live.

Sometimes you wish for anothers permission to do so.

We took turns sleeping on the floor

on pallets of wool blankets

and Pistons jackets that, in

morning, curled up about our feet

like the wrinkles of a giants forehead.

Uncle told us the story of the iron lung

for rich folk but for all the others, death.

When you smoke you think you drag a loved one

thru the streets. When, in fact,

it's you she drags.

Reviews

[Tree]

Provoking, and thoughtful. This was a poem that will not only make you think twice about lighting up, but now that I'm big even make one re-consider those naive child-memories of Olive, and that it was in fact, a love triangle, a terrible terrible love triangle....

That first line of the last stanza was the bridge of this whole poem for me, crossed me over and brought me home. A potent finish, too. You turned an inner perception into a crisp image then flipped it, on its head.

This piece has reminded me, and I hope other poets who come across this, that the mature poet bears a responsibility when documenting, not just about message, but about recognizing the important moment in the first place, and not letting it go. Instead you put all of you into it, and write about it. Carefully, write about it.

An important poem, dana. Thank you for laying it down.



Diego

[Marie Anzalone]

I have so far felt censored in the ability to tell all of my stories, and I am just now learning why, and what to do about it. The emotional toll of "all the others" around you, every day. The others who do not even make it into the hospital room to die. One either drowns in the undertow, refuses to enter the water; or tries to find ways to swim with and against, as needed, or not swim, in the current. An estimated 25% of all women here have pulmonary hypertension; from the combination of breathing cooking fire smoke, air pollution, and razor sharp particles of glass from the volcan 10 miles away. One of my best friends is dying at 44; her husband is falling to pieces under my watch. What can we do but move forward, finding purpose, knowing how agonizing some endings will be? Does purpose crumble into nothing on the death-bed, or does it make its bearer into something larger, leaving a greater presence in the world? We can never really know, can we? The exam always comes before the lesson.

[Lydia Shutter]

The things we think about when the sounds of the ICU need to be drowned out. The incessant beeping and the erratic breathing. It is a nightmare unlike any we have after eating spicy food! To think of Olive Oyl.....did she love Popeye or Brutus more.....we never were given a definitive answer....at a time like this seems like insanity personified, but it is what we do to keep semi-sane at times like that. Smoking.....I did it myself till 7 years ago....and I still miss it every minute of every day. Still, I hope my stopping will prevent my loved ones from having to lie down on the floor of the ICU waiting for the end What an intensely emotional write this is! Incredible!

[Rita L. Sev]

Your thoughts that seem unrelated flow seamlessly in this slice of life and death... A painful, poignant reminder of watching my father take his last breath, hooked up to "the bigger" oxygen tank when the small one wouldn't do anymore...

[Matching Socks]

So much to think about I'm not sure where to begin, I chucked at the reference to the week if the blood moon and then get carried into a baby bump and I wonder if there's either longing there, or acceptance?

Next, the classic Olive Oil, caught between two lovers, both pulling her affections in opposite directions.
One stealing it, the other the hero...

I may come back to this one, leaves more to think about for sure. :-)

[W.k.kortas]

I wonder who bad bigger feet, Olive Oyl or Bob Lanier?

On occasion, I find myself wondering what would happen if some adjunct community college instructor or someone teaching Creative Writing 101 had got ahold of you and talked you into tidying up your work into nice rhymind couplets. This is not about tidiness, about having a nice formal ribbon wrapped around the whole thing--but, as Diego has summed up brilliantly, there are indeed responsiblilties the mature poet bears, and eliminatiing messiness is not among them; indeed, accepting and embracing life's messiness is among them. That messiness is part of how we make sense of this life--if that makes any sense.

[Horizon K.]

...You have to want to live.
Sometimes you wish for anothers permission to do so...

A lovely poem Dana... It makes me think of all the ways we sometimes look for, to die... Destroy ourselves slowly, lie still, find dangerous places and detrimental activities... You do, have to want to live, and without the light from someone's love, how easy we think it would be, to excuse ourselves from longevity. This reminds me of something I once told a friend-- when your life no longer belongs to you, you know what it means to be loved. When I feel such despair, I want to sweep this life up and say-- always mine, always mine... You have to be alive...

[Cory Barrett]

Painfully gorgeous. I often lack the vocabulary to describe your work. The choices others make to affect their life, are often the choices that we are left to deal with.