Sister Death (running a wee bit late this weekend!)

More on Margo K... think I have a new research project. Because apparently poetry without research is just too spontaneous for this amateur.

Sister Death

I wonder about your face, mostly

why I cannot find a single image.

Is it that history tries to forget

the grave enablers?

Euthanasia’s next of kin?

I looked for your face to see for myself

how you could bear the death and

disposal in your brother’s wake.

How did you process your patients’

pain and hopelessness—

(Like a mother? A soldier?

A dog kicked to follow with dark empty eyes?)

typing and taping away

and not die some yourself?

You reached out to the dying dead

the frantic toddlers tumbling in the dark

falling without handrails or walls;

crashing through a house of leaves

never hitting the floor.

You reached out and plucked them from the fall,

tucked them into white sheets.

(Could it have been gentle?)

You did not talk them off the ledge

when you kissed them good night,

but (at least, perhaps) they went quietly.

As I try to picture your face,

your experienced eyes

I must ask and accept no answer:

Did you thread the needle lightly,

with tenderness? Or like an awkward nurse,

did you have to search for a vein,

fishing through fat and muscle

apologizing, this will only sting

but a moment.

Margo Kevorkian

Choppy. I know. Editing will hopefully take place for this and previous posts in the near future.

Margo,

the steady handed soldier,

the stagehand cloaked in black.

You recorded the interviews

the tales of pain and suffering,

the patients searching for peace.

You were there for the first fifteen

departures, procedures, final sessions--

pick your euphemism, Margo,

it's all the same in the end.

In the end all conditions are terminal.

Your brother, Jack, only agreed when

his patient told him: "There is not

any joy, not any joy in life."

Everything is conditional.

Your brother agreed,

"I know that, I know that."

No joy, not any joy,

but what of your silence, Margo?

Thanatron is Death Machine in Greek.

I found an image of your stone, Margo.

Head stone rubbings have given way

to amateur photographers, internet

historians and genealogists.

I found you buried

in gravestone search engines

death cult databases.

Is it wrong to smile,

discovering you here?

You know better than anyone

what the end looks like--the mess

left behind, the survivors taken

under your wing moments after you

and Jack sent their loved ones to rest.

You helped form support groups in

every town touched by the Doctor

and his Thanatron. You brought them

together after he tore them apart.

He was Dr. Death, but Margo, be true,

you were no Bedside Angel either.

CO2

Carbon Dioxide

just after its fire

has been snuffed

a small twist of smoke

winds upward from

the head of a match.

oxygen becomes CO₂.

exhale.

do not cling to

bad air

do not allow it to linger

mouldering

in the chest.

exhale

and release the

600 muscles that

rack the body.

sink toes,

heels into earth

and realize 600

will never be enough

and no one dies

with air in their chest,

not even bad air.

though you can move

smoke with your hand,

you cannot

capture it.

Hopefully the first and last late post

Sorry, I was watching the final episode of the Wire last night and managed to ignore my other obligations.

This isn't a poem, it's a rant. I'll do something with it next week, but it in the end it is unlikely it will look anything like this:

The Count

These days I count sand, hunched like a 'possum, one grain at a time. My tweezers neatly hoover, transporting each spec to the next pile. This position is a significant upgrade to my previous job counting salt. Salt counting is a far more labor intensive task--as much care must be put into maintaining the proper levels of aridity as is put into the actual counting, lest the salt granules moisten and stick together in clumps. The clumps have to be broken apart and spread to dry, then raked back and forth to re-create the proper size of particles before being shoveled back into the pile and counted again, one grain at a time.

Counting sand may seem less glamorous than counting salt, (sand doesn't have half the tricks or powers of salt--salt preserves food, sanitizes wounds, and can crystalize. Salt can also alter the boiling and freezing temperature of water. Sand, on the other hand, may reflect the sun or slowly wear away rock, but its effects do little for humanity beyond landscaping plastic beaches) but counting sand features significantly increased job security. Rock will always be crushed and worn by the wind into smaller and smaller sediments. The inventory of sand in the world will only increase with time--it is unlikely that sand will ever be "used up." Salt may be eaten or soak into the ground. Salt can be lost, and so I am content to enter work each morning, tweezers in hand, grip prepared to gingerly transport one bit of sand at a time. Ready to count.

The Easy Way Out

Short and rough. Really rough. But hey, at least it's short:

This Bar is Now Non-Smoking

It’s not quite my hundredth day

without a cigarette and

I still miss the companionship:

friends huddled together

around bar doorways until

the glowing embers danced too

close to the lips. Fingers stained

burnt umber, dry and cracked,

smash the butt into the wall.

Conversations that are

important never happen

inside bars. But at the fringe,

you can still feel the heat from

inside, still hear the bouncers

laughing and sometimes the

hard crack of a pool cue as

it strikes. At the fringe stand

the philosophers. The nihilists.

No denying nothing.