illness

the night was cold like spun glass.
where does it hurt? the doctor asks me.
i point to the back of my throat. i point
to everywhere. i say how can you die standing
up. he says easy and takes off the stethoscope
there he says, no more heart beat no more
breathing i say is that really dying he says yes
we cannot live without our bodies we are nothing
more than bodies i say how do you know.

i look out the window at all the metal instruments
rising up, the silent machinery of a world that has
eaten too much and doesn't know how to say that
the hurt grows it is not just in your stomach in your feet
in your elbows and your legs it is not in the places where
the medications can go doctor if you could look inside
my head if you could see the things i think about
you wouldn't tell me that i only run on oxygen anyone
who has ever seen the inside of anyone else's head knows
that bodies are only scaffolding to pick us up when someone
tries to knock down the way that we think it is not the tar in my
lungs that is making me cough it is the explosion in my diaphragm
the thing that makes me speak and scream and feel so hard it
makes my fingertips bleed doctor if you could look at me
now you wouldn't prescribe antibiotics. you would give me paint
in an IV. you would stop pretending you know where it hurts.
you would know what i mean when i say everywhere.
you would have a medicine and that medicine would not
make that hurt go away. it would teach the hurt to write poems,
maybe it will write poems someday.