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born out of that.

the sun still hidden there

awaiting the next chapter.

mind and heart

unaccountably we are alone

forever alone

and it was meant to be

that way,

it was never meant

to be any other way—

and when the death struggle

begins

the last thing I wish to see

is

a ring of human faces

hovering over me—

better just my old friends,

the walls of my self,

let only them be there.

I have been alone but seldom

lonely.

I have satisfied my thirst

at the well

of my self

and that wine was good,

the best I ever had,

and to night

sitting

staring into the dark

I now finally understand

the dark and the

light and everything

in between.

peace of mind and heart

arrives

when we accept what

is:

having been

born into this

strange life

we must accept

the wasted gamble of our

days

and take some satisfaction in

the pleasure of

leaving it all

behind.

cry not for me.

grieve not for me.

read

what I’ve written

then

forget it

all.

drink from the well

of your self

and begin

again.

TB

I had it for a year, really put in

a lot of

bedroom time, slept upright on

two pillows to keep from coughing,

all the blood drained from my head

and often I’d awaken to find myself

slipping sideways off the

bed.

since my TB was contagious I didn’t

have any visitors and the phone

stopped ringing

and that was the lucky

part.

during the day I tried TV and food,

neither of which went down very

well.

the soap operas and the talk shows

were a

daytime nightmare,

so for the lack of anything else

to do

I watched the baseball

games

and led the Dodgers to a

pennant.

not much else for me to do

except take antibiotics and the cough

medicine.

I also really saved putting

mileage on the car

and missed the hell out of

the old race

track.

you realize when you’re

plucked out of the mainstream that

it doesn’t need you or

anybody else.

the birds don’t notice you’re gone,

the flowers don’t care,

the people out there don’t notice,

but the IRS,

the phone co.,

the gas and electric co.,

the DMV, etc.,

they keep in touch.

being very sick and being dead are

very much the same

in society’s

eye.

either way,

you might just as well

lay back and

enjoy it.

crime does pay

the rooms at the hospital went for

$550 a day.

that was for the room alone.

the amazing thing, though, was that

in some of the rooms

prisoners were

lodged.

I saw them chained to their beds,

usually by an

ankle.

$550 a day, plus meals,

now that’s luxury

living—plus first-rate medical attention

and two guards

on watch.

and here I was with my cancer,

walking down the halls in my

robe

thinking, if I live through this

it will take me years to

pay off the hospital

while the prisoners won’t owe

a damned

thing.

not that I didn’t have some

sympathy for those fellows

but when you consider that

when something like a bullet

in one of your buttocks

gets you all that free attention,

medical and otherwise,

plus no billing later

from the hospital business

office, maybe I had chosen

the wrong

occupation?

the orderly

I am sitting on a tin chair outside the x-ray lab as

death, on stinking wings, wafts through the

halls forevermore.

I remember the hospital stenches from when

I was a boy and when I was a man and now

as an old man

I sit in my tin chair waiting.

then an orderly

a young man of 23 or 24

pushes in a piece of equipment.

it looks like a hamper of

freshly done laundry

but I can’t be sure.

the orderly is awkward.

he is not deformed

but his legs work

in an unruly fashion

as if disassociated from the

motor workings of the brain.

he is in blue, dressed all in blue,

pushing,

pushing his load.

ungainly little boy blue.

then he turns his head and yells at

the receptionist at the x-ray window:

“anybody wants me, I’ll be in 76

for about 20 minutes!”

his face reddens as he yells,

his mouth forms a down

turned crescent like a

pumpkin