WEBVTT

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Then the prose poems
are rather different.

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They become increasingly
like little stories.

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I'm very interested in them.

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This is one--

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I wrote one which is
deliberately, highly

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melodramatic.

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It's about a hospital and
it's called "The Next Bed."

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And it's about somebody
who's in the hospital

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and suddenly has all these
notions of mortality.

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So that's pretty corny and
the poem-- the first poem

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will have to be good to be
more interesting than the idea.

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That's the interesting thing
about these cliched plots

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and cliched forms of prose
is that hidden in them,

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is a possibility that they could
have been more interesting.

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Anyway, this is
called "The Next Bed."

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"He has a Himalayan
EKG and a metabolism

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like LaGuardia Airport.

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And he was a walking
wisecrack strapped to his bed.

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They took his blood
pressure every three hours.

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The nurses lied poorly to
him, as if turning down a date

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they were insulted to
have been asked for.

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Can I go home tomorrow?

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Maybe.

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Maybe tomorrow.

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It convinced him his
body was on loan.

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I hung on to mine.

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I bent over like a pump faucet.

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The physic, and the enemas,
and the mercury for the IVP

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all made me throw up.

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I paced the halls.

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Insomniac.

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Last one awake on the ward.

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Have you noticed how people who
can't sleep are proud of that?

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As if they'd committed
some small successful crime

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against the state.

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I loved staying up
late that night.

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That afternoon,
they'd steered me

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to the X-ray room
in a wheelchair.

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I waved my arms, crossed
and re-crossed my legs.

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When we came to swinging doors,
I pushed one out as indolently

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as I turned the hot water tap in
the bath with my left big toe.

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I walked the halls that night
and felt the flesh grow back

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on my X-rays.

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I'd wheel at the last
room and see him sleeping

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and see my rumpled bed and see
the third bed still made up

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with which he
threatened every nurse.

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OK, they'd say, now let's see
about that blood pressure.

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The column rose in its tube.

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I thought about
that stupid gauge

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while I threw up hospital food.

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I thought about the bends,
the little diver of nitrogen

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surfacing in the brain.

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The orderly who pushed
me to the X-ray room

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had told me I was the
youngest patient on the ward.

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And I was scared.

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I went to bed.

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Now and then, I
heard him gurgle up

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a bubble of the
body's bad dreams.

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In school, I did well on tests.

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Now, I was tired of winning.

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The next day, I charmed them
into letting me go home.

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I wouldn't eat chocolate,
banana, or vanilla

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for 24 hours.

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I'd bring back all my
urine for 24 hours.

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I'd be good.

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He was worse.

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I could hear him eating sleep.

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So long, I said.

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An orderly wheeled
me to the door.

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Let me take you to
your car, he asked.

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I want to smoke and
I want to be outside.

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Sure.

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He liked my old humpback Volvo.

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You don't see many
of them anymore.

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I was tired.

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I love that car, I said."

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