I.

strange here where everything stands on its head
strange where things make sense and still are sad
in their sensible way are horrific and meaningless
vaguely understood loss and confusion

-wake up call 3 am-

                the screaming man next door
                              wants his pain medication

-wake up call 4:30 am-

                the doctors and the nurses
                    want the blood of my sister again

-wake up call 9:00 am-

                the insurance company man
                              wants the medical report

and the medical report is thick

it reads like an encyclopedia
it smells like the fingers of a million doctors
and another million insurance men
it’s been flipped around and stared at
it’s been updated and cared for to document


what happened                                what happened to her
to her                                                         in places
in places like this                                        like this
for the last                                        for the last eighteen
eighteen years                                              years


feel this heaviness just for a minute humans
we are laughing, distracted for a moment
that is a sign of something
in some world somewhere

you deaf doctors
and nasty nurses

you stupid curtains
and idiot paintings

and now she wakes up

see you open your eyes touch your IV

where do you begin and I end Kaitlin?
how do these arms belong to you?
how does this pain feel in your body?

i know what the strained eyes are
i know what lies behind the pale face

there are no individuals in this world
where your body is not your own
and where we cry together involuntarily
filling up the empty vessels

human condition look out look out now
its happening here and I’ve warned you before

 
II.

saw the decades younger than me down and out
and held together with machinery
saw the laughing face and its other,
the painful scars of time:

spent waiting, trying to understand
spent talking softly so as to not damage
the already mangled ears
of the young and innocent

big decisions being made
and glasses being broken
around the table somewhere
in a real Pennsylvania shithole.

its just only spring and we’ve been rotting for months all of us

responsible adults inside freon warehouses and suburban bi level houses drinking themselves to death waiting constantly for the end praying hoping constantly for the end worshipping the meaningless life that is slipping slipping sliding into death and calmly, strangely

             who drive their cars into oncoming traffic on purpose
              praying hoping for lights out lights out
              on the new freeway
                                       that was just built 
                             to make getting to work 
                                           easier than before

never saw a more wrecked car in my life
they say he survived because
he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt
and was drunk

                                                                charcoal filter’d plastic gallon’d vodka
                                    keeps the blue lips quiver’d and livers holy
                                         o happy place! o heavenly promise!

 and not too far away in the really big and really spinning world there’s my really small and really breathing sister fighting for her future life that is still unwritten and was never promised never guaranteed never conceived as being anything except a fight and we are tired tired tired now

                                       makes one wonder, wonder, wonder.
                                      sitting in hospitals, hospitals, hospitals.
                                                where the food is bad
                                       and it smells slaughter house sterile’
                                               and the germs and worms
                                                   are all running feral’

stupid human machinery that can’t get it together cause time somehow operates different than we operate and the hands the seconds the minutes the hours they knock into each other roll over each other compress into one frozen present

all time does is count away
counts down away from innocence
and then we sit around thinking about the fall
and I’ve had my fair share

they break their backs round here at the steel mill in such a pure american way and my american hate is real as any red white and blue blooded beer drinking hunter on the prowl

my childhood rotting teeth
and my bloody arms my twisted bruised skull

              forget what flows through my veins and its bloody continuation
                       forget what flows through my head  and its stupid conclusions

trying to climb the tall trees in the yard
and the old men are yelling don’t get hurt kid
everyone at least once in their lives has dreams of escape
the problem she says  is you can’t escape your body unless…..

 
III.

“keep it together here just for once can’t you do that fuck she’s dying”

there was no way to know the future and the alcoholic mess didn’t help and the fake sympathy and fake emotions from friends and family didn’t help but only made me into a colder person now barely sleeping barely understanding

christ jamie christ wake up this might be the last time and then driving through empty dark bethlehem PA streets hey shit fuck jesus christ red lights and stopping and yelling– grandfather wasn’t the best in a car– finally in through the ER and i remember balloons through the closed gift shop window gold and glittery and shining

                     she’s nailed to a board and more tubes than flesh
             in so much pain that she’s not even crying

             the cruelest thing i have ever seen
                      tears run down my numb and white face

             “you can hold her hand, i mean, if you want” says the nurse

i felt my ten years turn into twenty. i sweat out my innocent and never ending time all over that sickly hospital floor—the crystallized and reflective pieces of my former self--the eternity i once thought was forever--threw up in the bathroom and felt the lines in my face double--looked at myself in the mirror:

there’s something wrong here

there’s something wrong here

there’s something wrong here

but the feeling i have prevents me from understanding

I can only understand this pain, which i remember distinctly 
as not coming from inside of myself  but from somewhere else

for the first time in my life the unknown became painful

so I held her hand and it wrapped around my index finger. i swear i felt energy there like i’ve never felt before or since. i looked at my father and he looked like a wounded animal. my mother defeated and retreating into the special room they reserved for humans like us in shock.

we lost our minds in those days


IV.

now I’m wound up and older, a real and honest mess of flesh who can’t sleep
and who screams at people through the shining lights.

sitting here abandoned on earth by gods who have deserted us 
and left us here to fend for ourselves  

its not fair and i never once thought it would be

where are you now my love
to witness this is changing me?
please understand
I feel and touch still
with the same hands
I speak and yell still
with the same voice


you’ve left this reality and so have I 
but not in the way you have

and i find myself in this comatose hospital
walking around desolate Oakland for air
not finding any food and low on cigarettes
typing now to you

and anyone else who will listen
at this point

            at this point where i have one day off a week
            and my back and arms are sore
            at this point where I’ve stopped cutting
            all the hair on my face and head

at this point in my dreams of total oblivion
where history is erased completely
and where everything changes again 
and i find myself totally confused with twenty eight years 
of damage and real love too

wanting and waiting to get out of this hospital escaping with my sister
and every other soul in here

        I’m holding some sort of strange vigil
            for all those lonely and moaning souls
            who walk and walk and walk 
       through endless waves of light and rain

       Indescribable pain with nightmarish visions 
       and holy chanting living and breathing labored life

I light this candle

and here is my invocation
and dream for our time:

that we keep holding on without wondering why

look out!

look out!

look out!

the last visitor knocks at everyone’s door and is faceless
O! bear your scars now suffering ones
they are recognized! they are the face of our time!
kaitlin my thoughts are with you now
in this period of great uncertainty