“Ms. & Mr. M.S.”
Battle of the acronyms
United
With
Silent disease.
My best friend,
His wife.
(Although)
Upon reflection,
Aren’t all diseases silent?
Bacteria
Viruses
And,
Malfunctioning cells,
Have,
To my knowledge,
Yet developed the power of speech.
But boy do they have a broad cannon of poetry, film, novel and song,
Sharing their miseries,
Their joy,
Their broken bones, curdled blood, oozing sores, lost hair, gargled breath, pissed-in sheets and shat-in panties,
Their heroic victories,
Lives cut short and Iliad-worthy journeys into the unknown,
A siren song of hope,
And/or love,
And/or anger and hate,
A determination to win
In the face of an enemy who is more chimera
Than ogre,
Shadowy demon you see but never grasp,
With whom you develop a co-dependency
A love affair
Half gaslit abusive
Half eternal love,
A commitment to you so fierce,
So total,
So complete
That within its grasp and clutch and kiss and fuck
You forsake, really,
All other earthly pleasures,
It’s totally enveloping
And consuming
Cocooning
You,
Held up high
Cast into the abyss
Floating ever on a calm,
Warm sun
Plunged into frigid darkness,
Down, and down, and down…
So deep that there starts to be a tiny light,
A speck of gold
In a vast ocean of black
A suffocating silence so complete that you no longer need to breathe
To worry
To feel
But you do,
And you swim, swim, swim,
Towards the glow
Growing
Growing, growing
Growing,
You see,
Off of your peripheral vision,
A small bronze-colored chain,
The sort underneath a bedside lamp,
Dangling,
Alone,
Which you reach for,
You near,
And you know you shouldn’t,
But you do,
And you grasp
And you hold, or delicately pinch,
It’s end
Between your little fingertips,
Feeling the edge of thin metal,
Still and quiet around,
A shaded bulb in the vast darkness
Of your muffled
And careful
Journey towards DEATH.
Your false lover.
Your demon.
Your obsession and hunger,
A hunger
That actually has its teeth in you,
Because it,
In the end,
Pulls on the little switch.
Click.
Lights out.
Goodbye.