Love Poem #40/Death
Rules/Perfect Tube Socks
for Leigh
It's a terrible thing,
gettin old, he says.
His words rasp like corn husks in fields he once ran in
my arms wrap around him, we pull to half-standing
his left hand's a claw he can't trust, clutching paper
he's learning to wipe himself, 8 minutes later
he's finished, we pivot, he slumps into wheelchair
we steer past the mirror, he hates what he sees there
his mouth is an anthill of herpes and thrush
from a busted immune system, but don't you feel lucky?
You're alive, 85, as I discard the latex
do I flash a big smile and say, Each moment's sacred?
It's impossible to work here and not dwell on aging
how we live and we die, how we spend all our days
and it's impossible to work in a nursing home
and not write your Death Rules on the drive home each day,
bringing them to
your lover like a contract printed on wilted roses:
I want to die immediately if any of these
conditions are met:
1.
I can't roll myself over in bed
2.
I have severe expressive aphasia and every word from my throat sounds
like uah uah and every word from my pen looks like children's
drawings of birds – looping flying Vs so distant you wonder if they'll
ever come back
3.
If you die first
The worst is when the residents talk of lovers they're missing
Shelba's body, post-stroke, is a switchblade crustacean
her mind is a glacier, the world is all winter
she remembers the summers, tree trunks with initials
she carries 3 husbands like quilts and old mittens
and whisper-spits cancer to whoever will listen.
Some carry old lovers like grandchildren pictures
some carry old lovers like shadows in wrinkles
some carry old lovers like Bibles to Christians
some forget they ate lunch, that their wives once existed.
And I've witnessed the worst Alzheimer's, people so helpless
they can't wipe their mouths after breakfast, so desperate
they hide in their bathrooms thinking nurses will kill them
and can't tell their children from fairy tale villains.
But truth is – there's some things I don't want to remember –
my boss's first name, my ATM number,
every fight that's my fault that I forced with my lover,
so I'd made up my mind to keep an alternate journal –
a journal of my triumphs in case memories don't last
stored away like In Case Of Alzheimer's Break Glass
and I'll laugh as I read about my victories
my theory of relativity
my Delorean I turned into a time machine
my game-winning jumper at the buzzer over Craig Ehlo
all the kids in Roop Underroos yellin Daniel is my hero!
The 4 years I won the National Poetry Slam with depth and wit
And PSI kept misspelling "Daniel Roop" as "Patricia Smith"
and list after list, evidence of my greatness,
but my drive home today made me change this:
I saw these two kids about 14, hand-in-hand holding,
green fields to road slowly, then split to go home,
I don't know if they just got together or broke up
but he had a sweet smile, she had tan legs and tube socks
it was sunset, those moments where you tolerate Hallmark.
And what if they could keep that? The things we don't notice –
their hands filled with sweat and wet gravel and promise
and what if we could keep that? The moments between moments,
brave and honest enough to know memories own us
to not dwell on Death Rules, but the hand that I'm holding.
And Leigh, I know you're listening, because you are always
I carry other people's stories like candles in dark hallways
to learn about the seconds that make minutes that make centuries
to make up for any lapses that start happening in our memories
wishing this poem was a country song they'd hum in rural Tennessee
at graveside services, at weddings, and at christenings
keep kissing me, it's bliss to me, this present moment heavenly
forget tragedy and gravity and youthful blue catastrophes
bring our past to me in our future when I fade, not big lies glistening,
just a burned bootleg CD of you
whispering our history.
© Daniel Roop
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