Reset Forty-Nine, Day Three Hundred Fifty-Two

[rejectomorph]

Saturday I saw all those web posts about the northern lights, and decided I'd give some attention to them Saturday night when they were expected to return. But then I got very tired, and took a nap that lasted until half past two this morning, and then my brain didn't engage until about six, and by then it was too late. My legs were getting terrible cramps when I woke up, which was quite distracting, and on top of my regular old guy forgetfulness, so it's not surprising that I didn't remember. So my experience of this years rare northern lights display was no more than a couple of days of really slow Idernet, and some pictures online that took forever to open.

But now I write a few words and sit for an hour as though they would grow like seeds into something beautiful, but they are still just a few words and tit seems I have no more today. The sunlight is now spilling into the backyard and all the leaves of the poke weed and the grape vine and the two big bushes I can't identify are an improbable spring green dripping light as sharp as lemon juice. It hasn't gotten hot yet, but it will. The fan blowing all night got the apartment down to 71 degrees, which I can live with, or die with, six of one half a dozen of the other. My brain fuzz has me sad and I think I'll see if I can nap some more and forget where I am and why.




Sunday Verse

Angels of Mercy

by Bob Hicok


Everyone waiting reading the coverless magazines
reading brochures on Alzheimer's & bone-loss two kinds
of forgetting

I call my father don't tell him where I am he says
they think his heart now maybe his kidneys now
maybe doctors what do they know stay away
from doctors son yes dad

The woman across from me yawns pushes her hands
up her face pulls the skin back her hands
are wings she's thirty years younger for a second
a moment of plastic surgery when her face sags home
it's a scrotum

The man beside me is held together by liver spots
he coughs I hold my breath

Two doctors come out sit in our laps kiss our mouths
lick our teeth our eyes stroke our heads purr
two doctors in white coats of feathers wearing piles
of snow two doctors speaking Spanish and Hebrew and rap
speaking tongues two doctors with six knees apiece
with accordions in their voice boxes two doctors burning
glowing two doctors made of lava tell us we will die
but not today we will die but not forever and then
and o they give us suckers I'd like orange please life
is sweet