SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

 

 

My room has white walls
Manacled with drips and catheters,
at night I conclude
I must be a prisoner
facing my last dawn,
the fatal shot up the cannula
What have I done?

I’ve had the temerity to get sick
that’s what.
Something’s wrong
with my gut.
I need ten days of antibiotics
through a vein.

Hour after hour the walls get to me,
screening silent episodes of my life.
I wait and wait for meals,
meds and obs.
Then there’s the TV -
it could be our family’s first.

“Hello childhood,”
it smiles, sparing me no pain,
“Remember me?”

THE CURSE OF UNNECESSARY WORK

 

A fine day in Eden:
it could have been California,
but Eve woke uneasy.
She sought out the snake
with whom she sometimes spoke.
He knew
this was the day to strike.

“You are bored,” he said,
and she immediately agreed.
“I have fruit for you,” he said,
“that will turn you into a god.”
She ate,
and saw that she was naked.

She took the fruit to Adam
and it worked its magic on him.
That evening God came walking,
but Adam and Eve hid.

 Expelled from the garden, they would,
God said, now need to work to eat.
“This was so avoidable:
if you had done as I said
you would still be in Paradise.
Unnecessary work
is now your curse.”

He took his leave.
Outside the gate
Adam caught and killed a lamb,
lit a fire, left the skin
for Eve to make a cloak.