My Internist Prescribes

Guess it depends on which of your three eyes that you look at it with.

All I see, floating around me, is detritus.

The detritus of denied intimacy.

The detritus of the glib.

Like beautiful Venezia, you float in your gondola

and ignore the surfing turds.

Peripherally, if you take the time to stuff cotton wool up your nose,

there is the renaissance,

gargoyles in repose.

Pretty girls chinning crumbling window sills.

Perry Como crooning.

A strand of DNA showing off, curtsying,

vaguely remembering my ancestors days of slavery in Mitzrayim.

A novella performed in my arteries.

My internist prescribes,

I obey.

The pills are orange and yellow and a gruesome sort of flecked turquoise.

I wash them down with lukewarm water

and the eye at the back of my head winks..

 

 

Religious

I pray in the morning.

I drink at night.

Somewhere in between there is the dog barking

the genuflecting of authority figures.

The urge for fried food.

A notion of racial purity.

Beethoven with his ear smushed into the piano lid.

The first names of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The ten plagues always carry I.D.

“Hi! My name is Locusts!”

The facsimile of God that all those meaty boys pray to in football season

Knows that repetition causes cancer..

And in the Garden of Eden it rains and rains.

You think you’re in Manchester.

I’m not a bit religious, except when it comes to taking my pills.

 

 

Dear Yahweh

Dear Yahweh, can’t wait to be a burden on my kids.

Long long time, they’ve cumbered me

So, soon they’ll  deliver and carry

Bleach and clean and scrub-a-dub-dub.

And do it happily.

 

No Sun City for me.  No old folks warehouse, please.

No special strangers tossing me

like some smelly old sack of shit.

Each must take turns putting me up

in a sunny parlor, so’s I don’t have to climb

to the top of the stairs. A nice

glimmering walk-in bath  with handles installed

A minor cost….. Yours, of course.

 

The purpose of children is insurance

A girded codpiece against the testicle-kicks of mean daddy time

A guarantee. Insurance.

Yeah, that’s what kid s are  all about!

Bring them up in your own image, knowing that they

Owe you and oughtn’t just farm you out

 

I’ve spent all the money on schooling and clothing.

Attended the ceremonies and soccer practices,

Cheered for you religiously at your games.

Knowing that, once you’re earning, you’ll be gone.

Only recreatable in photographic shrines,

Discount baby-sitting, birthday parties,

Christmas present competition and good Thanksgiving wine!

 

It’s been a blessing.

Really!

Now Lordy Lord Yahweh, dude.

I’m gonna be a burden on my children

Yes. And on my children’s children too.

 

Ivor Irwin 

 

IVOR IRWIN is a native of Manchester, England. He is the author of A Peacock or A Crow and has published writing in Sonora Review, The Sun, Playboy, Shankpainter, The Long Story, Actos de Inconsciencia, The Review of Contemporary Fiction and various other journals, including Burning Word. He writes a weekly column on Premier League soccer for Global Football Today. He thinks that a kidnapper who quotes Malthus may auger well for future sociopaths!
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