Proverbially

Thirty days hath November, and the rest
I don't remember, but I know that in the wash
of everything it probably can't matter much:
here’s the real excoriation: here’s the touch,
the deal that causes chatter, fear: the only way
to feel completely here is, get as near to that
slick edge as you can manage without falling
over: stalling like a deer in those proverbial
oncoming headlights will proverbially never do:

you think you're being safe, but honey: you
are imminently through. A friend informed me
at a meal today that I appeared to want to die –
not in an obviously suicidal way, but in
the manner in which I had pleasantly imagined
being dumped on Medicare in some stark nursing
home: I'd seen it in a movie, and it seemed
okay to me: a bed, a curtain and an operative
TV: when the time has come to not to be,

why not be there? It won't cost much – and you
can breathe the air equivalently; eat what food
they choose to spoon into your dying mouth,
and wait while everybody else expensively goes
south to wait, to have the dark, as it will do,
find you. But back to who you have to be to be
with eagerness, alacrity, and zip, before November
ends: my friend may well have caught that
for the moment I have given up all thought

of winning anything: no trip, no love, no grand
acclaim, no hunger to disseminate my name:
perhaps he’s right that I am looking in instead
of up and out, and that may well engender doubt
that I'm not terribly atip to be about: haven't
told him I am hanging from a hidden rim above
a secret glass that holds a magic drink that
gods I haven't met yet soon will sip. Proverbially,
I will fill ‘em up and let ‘er rip and leave a tip.


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