Then the prose poems are rather different.
They become increasingly like little stories.
I'm very interested in them.
This is one--
I wrote one which is deliberately, highly
melodramatic.
It's about a hospital and it's called "The Next Bed."
And it's about somebody who's in the hospital
and suddenly has all these notions of mortality.
So that's pretty corny and the poem-- the first poem
will have to be good to be more interesting than the idea.
That's the interesting thing about these cliched plots
and cliched forms of prose is that hidden in them,
is a possibility that they could have been more interesting.
Anyway, this is called "The Next Bed."
"He has a Himalayan EKG and a metabolism
like LaGuardia Airport.
And he was a walking wisecrack strapped to his bed.
They took his blood pressure every three hours.
The nurses lied poorly to him, as if turning down a date
they were insulted to have been asked for.
Can I go home tomorrow?
Maybe.
Maybe tomorrow.
It convinced him his body was on loan.
I hung on to mine.
I bent over like a pump faucet.
The physic, and the enemas, and the mercury for the IVP
all made me throw up.
I paced the halls.
Insomniac.
Last one awake on the ward.
Have you noticed how people who can't sleep are proud of that?
As if they'd committed some small successful crime
against the state.
I loved staying up late that night.
That afternoon, they'd steered me
to the X-ray room in a wheelchair.
I waved my arms, crossed and re-crossed my legs.
When we came to swinging doors, I pushed one out as indolently
as I turned the hot water tap in the bath with my left big toe.
I walked the halls that night and felt the flesh grow back
on my X-rays.
I'd wheel at the last room and see him sleeping
and see my rumpled bed and see the third bed still made up
with which he threatened every nurse.
OK, they'd say, now let's see about that blood pressure.
The column rose in its tube.
I thought about that stupid gauge
while I threw up hospital food.
I thought about the bends, the little diver of nitrogen
surfacing in the brain.
The orderly who pushed me to the X-ray room
had told me I was the youngest patient on the ward.
And I was scared.
I went to bed.
Now and then, I heard him gurgle up
a bubble of the body's bad dreams.
In school, I did well on tests.
Now, I was tired of winning.
The next day, I charmed them into letting me go home.
I wouldn't eat chocolate, banana, or vanilla
for 24 hours.
I'd bring back all my urine for 24 hours.
I'd be good.
He was worse.
I could hear him eating sleep.
So long, I said.
An orderly wheeled me to the door.
Let me take you to your car, he asked.
I want to smoke and I want to be outside.
Sure.
He liked my old humpback Volvo.
You don't see many of them anymore.
I was tired.
I love that car, I said."