You want my day?
You want my day?
(sullen glower suddenly erupts
into Jack Nicholson on the witness stand)
You can't HANDLE my day!
Pain is my alarm clock.
(Now, THERE's a catchy title;
maybe
I oughta write a book!)
It drags me outta bed at dark-thirty
to go feed a horse I can't ride
(but someday...oh, someday!)
strapping on a gun because it ain't safe
in this winter dark
to walk as far as the damn stable!
If the cougar don't get ya then
the wild pigs will.
Highpoint!
Smell of coffee when I walk back in
tells me the wife is awake
even before she enters
with a smile
that makes the sunrise dim
by comparison.
"What time did you want to leave, Sweetie?"
Crashdive! Oh, yeah.
Today is the Pain Clinic in Phoenix.
"I guess, about a half an hour."
It's a good two hour drive to Phoenix,
the last thirty miles of which
will probably be at twenty miles per hour.
Damn traffic!
I drive it because I can (still) drive.
Vicki's appointment is also today,
but two hours earlier than mine.
So I wait.
In the world's most uncomfortable chairs.
(Keeerist, don't these people know
that in a pain clinic, anyone waiting
is in PAIN!?)
...I wait to be laid out on a table
shirt up, pants down, COLD AS HELL!
while multiple needles are stuck into my spine.
Then I wait...because "policy insists
that we establish a baseline blood pressure
after such a procedure" (then inisists
that we measure against it five times
over the next hour).
It doesn't change.
I'm way too used to the pain; it was
low enough for an athlete of thirty
when I sat down.
We could go eat something
now that it's over.
Who has an appetite after that?!
So I drive. (Vicki can't, but they insist
that I bring her, can't have
the procedure unless I have "a driver"...so
I suffer the procedure
without anesthesia
because I have to drive.)
The pain in my back
makes driving
Oh, SO much fun!
(GET OFF MY ASS, ASSHOLE!)
The drive back is always quicker
always seems longer
always means cramps
around the gaping holes
in my back!
A trickle of cold warmth
invades my beltline.
I'm bleeding.
I know that when
I walk into the pharmacy
there'll be a lovely big bloodstain
on the ass of my jeans.
People stare
point
whisper
(Just give me my damn meds
and let me the hell out of here!)
"What?
We have to stop for GROCERIES?!"
Dark when we drove out.
Dark when we drive in.
Have to feed the horse
fix that fence-rail we noticed
down, as we drove away
this morning
a century ago.
"Dinner?"
She isn't hungry.
She's never hungry
since they screwed up
that surgery two years ago.
(Oh, God, she's so THIN!)
My wife is disappearing in front of me.
I perform
culinary miracles
to tempt her palate
in the direction
of nutrition.
She takes four bites. (I count them
anxiously.)
Then I do dishes
and pretend not to hear
as she vomits in the bathroom
...and I cry in the dishwater.
I put her to bed
put on a movie
lie down and listen to her breathe.
I'll fall asleep soon
but she'll be awake before midnight, and I...?
pain is my alarm clock.
You want my day?
You can't HANDLE my day!
...but I wouldn't trade you
anyway.
© MMVIII eric lee
Author notes
Life is hell.
She makes it heaven, anyway.
A contest entry
- 5000 points winner takes all. Easy stuff. by Nogod.
5000 points, ended March 3, 2008, 24 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 24 of 24
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Eric..fuck me dead! this brought tears to MY eyes..this insensitive bitch's eyes! Aaaargh! This was amazing..so much genuity in yours words. God, if this experience makes you write like this, it proves further that positive things do come from adverse events.
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Aw.
I love you, both. I truly do. You are a beautiful husband and I love her for all the reasons in the world and I don't even know her. But when I read the things you write about her, I know I love her.
My little, Landon... as much as I grieve around the clock, there is no way, given a choice of forgetting him and living in eternal bliss or remember him and dying a slow agonizing death of the heart, I would choose to remember him. I love him too much to live happily without his memory.
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Have I told you recently that you're really very precious to me?
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You have, in more ways than you realize.
I love you.
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I live in pain too. I'm so sad for you both, and so very very sorry my friend.
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I hope that things are better now, pain changes our personality, instead of crying, I get angry and if the neighbors should hear me, I hope they realize what it is, or either think it's tourettes syndrome
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I see I've fallen down on replying to people; I spend nearly all my time in the Pub, lately. (And the truth is, I'd forgotten writing this piece. I don't usually remember the contest stuff.)
This was written when I had two eyes and my wife was brunette and weighed 140...and was falling fast from the voluptuous 180 that looked so good on her 5'10" frame. (a surgery went bad on her.)
Now I'm that cyclops you see in my avatar, Vicki weighs 120 and has let her hair go blond again. Most everything else is pretty much just the same as in the poem...except that our medical insurance has just pushed us into a "You Pay More" category.
Yeah...I'd like to tell everyone around me that I have #*@$% tourettes!
But she still makes my life heaven, at least compared to being without her. -
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You make a beautiful couple and look so happy in the picture..you are blessed to still have one another. The eyepatch adds to your character...
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I've said before-
Food in the fridge, rent paid, bills paid, so what the fuck am *I* complaining about?
I think poetry is more powerful when it is an honest documentary of the fact... this poetry is really powerful.
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Oh it's so heartfelt. I hope that things improve for you and vicki.
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Jack Nicholson got ya to second. As much as I don't much like Tom whatshisface I like Jack and A Few Good Men is a cool movie.
I'm getting your number of boson higgs and phoning you. I found out some info. I respond well to, NO! I don't want Higgs giving out my number! or OK, do what ya feels right.
Have a crappy silver trophy, I don't need it.
dave
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Written like a play - played out right in front of us. LIfe is hell - seems to be what others think too. Hope all y our yesterdays are not like this, and dome tomorrows will be better.
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I liked your "Few good men" reference at the outset,"dericlee", that was a really dramatic scene from movie I really liked-
you set us up for drama and, in a more low-keyed but more real way than Hollywood,you walked us through a day of drama.I thought the end was very effective bringing the movie reference around again for a punch! But what I like even better at the end is that we understand and feel you pain but rather than see a soul lost to selfpity we see the grit and determination to go on: "...but I wouldn't trade you anyway."
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Wonderful. Extremely touching.
Walk a mile, they say, Walk a mile... well this poem was quite a mile.
I felt your day.
To the indomitable spirits who keep on plodding.
*******
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sounds like you have a better day than mind...you live it...I think it...either way...perhaps cheating death...is not so great after all..such as I wrote
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I don't so much mind the rest...I've cheated death so many times that I no longer consider it cheating him, just out-playing his game with the cards in my hand.
Pain is my alarm clock, not so much in the physical sense, though it is that physical pain that generally wakes me hours before I want to be up...no. The ALARM lies in the necessity to roll over, semi-conscious, and make sure that my wife is still breathing! It lies in having found, twice now, that she wasn't...and that had I not made that unconscious check, she wouldn't have been there to greet me in the morning.
I really don't much care about cheating death out of bringing me back...but I'll fight him to the depths of hell before he'll take her from me!
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like it alot.if i could i'd help you with the horses. this is a powerful piece
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Can you ride? She really needs to be ridden! It's been like five years, and she's getting cold-backed.
[edit} I really don't mind feeding her, and since it's done before dawn, a stranger would likely just freak her out.
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Wowsers this is really nice! Great job keep on penning!
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You don't need my words to tell you this is deep and touching. But I will give them anyway. Along with empathy from a fellow being who, in my own way, understands...even if not entirely. Sometimes the only thing that can make us fight through our own pain to meet a new day or minute is the need to be brave and take one more breath and one more step for someone else who needs us.
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It would be nice to put such a noble face on it, Amber.
The truth is, I need HER. Always will...so I put one foot in front of the other, whatever it takes. -
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I can tell from some of the comments and statements you have made about her that you truly love her.
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I met up with someone (over the internet) that I sort of knew 40 years ago. We exchanged the sort of polite catch up questions about how life had treated us in the intervening years, starting with where we are now. She said, 'I love every minute of every day'. This threw me a bit, I mean no one does that,do they. She must have sensed my consternation because she added, 'of course every minute of every day contains a load of shit I can do without, but I had cancer 5 years ago and it is in remission, so I take every minute of every day as an extra one with my husband and wouldn't trade them for anyone's. (Well almost anyone). Made me think though. These things are what make each one of us the uniqueness that is us innit, and without them, who would we be? A departure on style for you here I think Eric, but it works fine. And no, I don't think I could handle it. The pain maybe, not watching your wife fade away.(well you know what I mean) No I couldn't handle that.
edited typos- this keyboard is falling to bits.
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Yeah...we take each moment as an "extra".
I've only had ten years of her...I hate to seem greedy, but dammit! It's not enough!
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