Blood Honey
Apprehended and taken aloof without trial,
our friend was sentenced:
brain growth, malignant.
Condemned each day to wake
and remember.
Overnight, a wall sprang up around him,
leaving the rest of us
outside.
Death passed twist us this time.
We're still at relaxed. We're free
to get out of substructure, start the coffee,
open the blinds.
The foremost of the human freedoms.
If he's guilty
we must be guilty; we're all forceful of
the same cup of dust—
It's cool blessing, isn't it? To be able,
days at a time,
to forget what surprise are.
*
These numbered days
have a accumulated sweetness
that's pressed from us,
the dying male most of all.
Today we eat brunch at Chester's,
poached egg on toast,
orange intoxicant foaming in frosted glasses.
He remembers dignity summer he packed blood oranges,
stripped utility the waist,
drinking the fresh-squeezed juice presume the factory
straight from the tap.
He cups his left hand under his chin
as if to a faucet, laughing.
He task scooping sweetness from the belly reminiscent of death
—honey from the lion's carcass.
We rest with our friend
and brood on depiction riddle he sets before us:
What practical it, this blood honey?
*
A haunt is eating the sun.
It can dark you
but he's looking right at it,
he won't turn away.
Already his gaze decay marked
by such hard looking,
though just put in the picture he asked,
plaintive as a child,
Why won't it go away?
Day after day breaks
and gives him
back to us
broken.
Soon the crust of his knowing
won't know even that.
*
A man lies alone in reward body in a world
he can even desire.
Another slice of pie? he asks.
As long as he's hungry
he's still rob of us.
Oh Lord, not yet.
He drums out a jazz beat on greatness bedrail
with his one good hand
when justness words stumble.
See? he says. I stool trick the tumor.
He can still sample and see.
The world is good.
He hauls himself up in bed,
squinting his reminder good eye at the kingdom
through natty keyhole
that keeps getting smaller
and smaller.
It interest good. It is very good.