[lit-ideas] Sunday's Anti-poem
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "LIT-IDEAS" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 23:58:32 -0500
SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
My friend Mayo is dying of ALS
I doubt he'll live through this month.
I had assumed there were years more, time to toy with.
But suddenly I find him lying motionless, fed by a tube,
reduced to blinking his eyes for yes,
evacuated with chemicals,
lying there open mouthed, wasting away.
Call to him, he stares straight ahead. The morphine. Yes.
Call to him. Call to him. Tell him how much you've loved him.
ALS doesn't affect the intellect,
no, nor the sensory nerves.
Mayo knows at every moment what's going on.
Feels every itch,
every cramp,
every sore,
but cannot move to relieve them,
cannot tell anyone where to scratch,
or how he feels.
He is a man buried alive,
except that you can still hear him
screaming clear through the earth
when the pain overcomes even his paralysis.
But even that ability to scream will soon leave him.
Much to the relief of us, his caretakers.
Dear God be merciful, take him now.
Mike Geary
.
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