——The IV pump beats to the meter of a machine heart not mine.
This place of mists I'm in recalls the body of my work; my work
now is of the body, burning brightly, conscious of its labor,
so of the world but not in it; and suspended in the question
of my continued existence: all my existence.
But that’s recalled. Here I am, and I am not yet tired of singing;
The heartbeat-not-mine measured out a fine counterpoint as I am—
was—on the whitest of hospital sheets listening so carefully: sum
sum sum. . .The light and dark of days and nights passed unknown to a me
I no longer am—I was absented—past pieces of a me,
a broken mirror; flakes of memory that feel no distant
past heat, seek no horizon line, hear no syntax, see no distant
mountain where I am not, feel nothing lost: I seek no distance.
I adjure myself: I am no longer mine, lost in that distance.——

What I am is a fractured thing that keeps returning to moments,
trying to read while the wind blows the pages of the book backwards.
Live long enough, and you’ll pass yourself on the road many times.
If I imagine escape from retelling, it looks akin
to indifference and I can barely abide the sight of you.
You should’ve gone through the gate, into the rose garden; should’ve. 
The bloodless blossoms would’ve suggested a new imperative:
No: Let the weeds run, the wasps chew holes in the petals. Stop pruning. 
You yourself are an abstraction now, and I’m in full-blown love;
the sound of the pump is as gone as it can be; I got away;
ban ambiguities in favor of orderless abundance, 
words bringing me here, and suddenly I’m real, and the garden’s gone.