Give him a shot of Stemetil
as he thinks of holding
a match burning down
to the pinch, of a summer sun setting
behind a line of Norfolk pines,
of the resonance of cicadas in January,
of men loading fishing boats onto
weeping trailers—
He murmurs as they cart him from the house,
‘Love is as the pilot of a TV series never made.
Not enough.’
He slurs, ‘I have to spew.’
And the ambo goes,
‘Use the bag, champ.’
And the nurse goes,
‘Do you know where you are?’
And he goes,
‘In an ambulance.’
Although he isn’t. Not anymore.
And, so, the interrogations begin as
stalactites of blood
coagulate, sharpen
into stakes above bed eight.
The giant toad squatting,
dead centre of the room,
is not a figment,
but a fact. He lies on
its white tongue as a black swan
of a woman wheels above him.
Feathers tickle skin that covers
the too-small skull that is his face;
remind him of Coole,
of a funeral
in his brain, of nothing.
Smiling, she says, ‘So,
you want Miles Davis.’ Shows
a set of small white baby teeth
that were never lost, slides
the tongue back inside
the gullet, where he lies,
picturing her eating meat
rare at Vlados. Her voice is piped
through his headphones.
She says, ‘Remain perfectly still,’
although nothing ever is.
Then Something Blue begins and he thinks,
‘Almost nothing.’
*
His life repeats on the portable TV
power-drilled
to the hospital ceiling.
The actor playing him
is blonde, but the Minobos
plays herself in
the sex scenes where
the he that is not him
presses the she that is her
hard
into the bed—searching
for the part of her
that cannot lie.
