Askew Man Leaving The Hospital

In this town
There are several
Rectangles
Where spectral

Conception's
More alien than
A Neptune
Statistic.

And where earthlings,
Inertia-challenged, are
Rubbed, oiled, and rosied-up
For a fee.

Minus an eyelash,
Plus a brow,
A new lament.
Who knows this

Peculiar algebra
Which does
Not 
Convert?

And today,
Dissolute as December's
Last hour,
You're leaving the

Hospital, in fear
Of arrest, dealing
And sealing
The soliloquy

Which sears
With a tiger's
Intent.
Leaving the

Sacred (at least theory-
wise.problem's not capitalism
but weltanschaaung, ethos,
baseball's long ball, etcetera)

Joint, where you,
For an instant,
Melted with supposed
Salubrious trend,

All the while jeering
The premise of tungsten
And exchange.
Where you discovered green peas, while

Wait up, halt-
No cutes or clevers
Can bridge the
Gaping inrony.

Halt, hold on, let's be
Candid: The bloody agonies.
(lugubrious? Not at all-
'fess up, you've

the defendant,
stained as a slave 
ship, and as innocent as
anyone.)

And,
You entered
Periwinkle
Without a heart 

Twinkle.
Admit it, the mutilations!
And your need to stand!
In the adjacent bed

A sallow man chokes
On the second hand.
A man of whom
Many say:

"Worthless," "no good,"
"Smells like bourbon,"
Well, last week, he
Acquiesced to the quickest

Descent, so now he
Strangles cerebral birds
And pleads for the
Innocent.

You mean the elixirs!
He is your friend.
Volition
Checked you

Both in,
So specifics are nothing.
If not this.
Something.

Your drunk friend's wife enters
With daughter
And granddaughter mulatto,
As he evinces

Like a banjo's twang.
Your former girl appears-
Her love slicing the whiteness
With an x-ray's concern.

She slings a word sack
And shakes forth one more plan.
No bingo.you are an askew man.
She scurries on.

Your pal, doubling as chauffeur,
Arrives, and you expand
Like the cloud
Threads, which

Loop the hallway, wheelchair
Pushed as a needle, past nurses,
Janitors, chipped fingernails, to the
Buick which is fueled by

A blasphemous process, though window's 
Not television, besides, your
Side's an evening, opaque, but the
Driver's is clear lik

An earthquake, and he
Aptly navigates
Aware of
Things like

Sun,
Moon, and
Suicides,
You mean

Stars.

Copyright Kemal Faruquee 2000