Physical Therapy

Let’s not pick up the meds, she said.
She’d only flush them down the toilet
or sneak them to the neighbor’s dog,
so what choice was there?
I’ll take that extra 20 minutes of my life,
thank you very much,
and you,
you know those pretty little pills could extend yours by 20 years
but yes, they are ever so slightly bitter.

But who wants to be over 75 anyway?
Who wants to be over 11?
That first sprout of body hair rang the death knell,
the mourning bell,
telling us our unproductive days were numbered.
The summers are still sunny and the pool still crystal,
but we can’t touch them anymore.
The UV rays bring cancer and no amount of chlorine can kill our ennui.
But they’re still there,
watching over us,
playing with new little ones before their time runs out.

And they still join us as we build our yolks,
delighting in the .05 jump in our stocks
while forgetting the delight of jumping on a trampoline.
The drugs never did a damn thing, did they?
The drugs were us,
our chemicals,
our millstones
and those days ran long and overlong
and dusk melted into us
as fireflies blinked their ghostly signals
from somewhere beyond.

The cycle has never broken and never will,
but we must;
what we have and what we keep remaining up to us.
Now that we can stay up later
the days are shorter,
now that we can drive
there’s nowhere to go.
Now we have money
but can’t buy what we want.
Now we understand our parents,
our grandparents,
our uncles,
our aunts,
but they can no longer hear us.

What is it we had and where can we find it?
Let’s firebomb the place and dance in the ruins.

He’s waving with quiet eyes from his second-story bedroom.
He’s pressing his hand on the glass,
longing for the tree,
the grass,
the sky,
the rocks,
the dirt,
the mud,
the shit,
the bees,
the bites,
the falls,
the blood,
but none will ever come.
None have and none will.
But I will.
And I’ll take his hand and lead him home again.


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