Love Alone by Paul Monette

Author:Paul Monette [Monette, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-7378-2
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-02-22T16:14:00+00:00

Current Status 1/22/87

marginal no change T-4 four-sixty-five

as of 12/8 but the labs are notoriously

inexact nerdy white-coat sits eyeballing

his microscope counts the squiggles in a cubic

inch racks them up on his abacus and writes

his apt # on the lab slip thus I’m fifteen

less than August thirty-five more than June

this is not statistically meaningful nor am I

the walking wounded do not count the counting

begins at breakthrough how are my lymph nodes

how are they not a mere three-quarters

centimeter at the neck in the vampire spot

cm and a half in the armpit not suggestive

unless they harden or start to throb taking

four hundred milligrams ribavirin b.i.d.

the magic dose if results released 1/9

prove to be long-term of course when you cry

all day an afternoon can be frightfully

long-term but we mustn’t muss the curve with

personal agendas equal dose acyclovir

ditto twice a day this part purest guesswork

doesn’t attack HIV but seems to lower

the general viral bullshit level and besides

the cornflower-blue capsules go quite nicely

with the royal-and-white of the ribavirin rather

like the flag of an island nation which I am

bowels normal though I peer at each specimen

in the bowl like an oracle poking entrails

David E who just got back from the Rift

Valley where man began says if you flush

a toilet five feet south of the Equator

the spiral flows clockwise five feet north flows

counterclock this is the only non-medical

fact I have learned in two years moving now

to the head twenty milligrams sinequan for

despair no effect at all but may help

tip me over into sleep that little church

of the dark which bars me all its sacraments

add fifteen milligrams dalmane 2 A.M. for

the final knockout not the same as sleep

not even the same as night but a full-bore dose

of sinequan makes you Lennie in Of Mice and Men

within two weeks and you eat whole loaves of

Wonder Bread till your moon-face waddled body

humpty-dumpties off a wall no mouth sores

fevers sweats bruises like imploded orchids

nothing significant see you in March

to put it quite simply I’M DOING FINE

or as we say in California DOING GREAT

holding a shiv to the listener’s throat as if

to dare contradiction the test-givers

bald numerologists and milligram chemists

all my tribe of shamans and not a one knows

the iron tests I watched you suffer the six

spinals three broncs your bone marrow sipped by

a ten-inch needle till you had enough numbers

to stump an algebra class pyramided like

a Mayan calendar exact to the second for

a thousand years by which time the last Mayans

stared out of stone eyes at the blue monkeys

who swarmed their decimal palaces my medicine

men can’t see my condition is just a prefix

my vast pharmacopoeia no more than a grave

nod to you my friend who bore so many

milligrams we needed a gram balance like

a charcuterie in Paris tests of tests

my groping docs might just as well use leeches

for all they can touch my invisible disease

cracks on the heart don’t blip on an EKG

thus no treatment sorry we don’t cure life

Rog I am still in the anteroom of all

the useless measures leafing old Peoples

reading diplomas deep in my head I hear you

the night of

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