Let him be. Give him a cigarette if he comes to. So he’s dying of lung-cancer, so what? It’s a terminal case. Dose him with morphine whenever he asks for it, whether for analgesic or recreational satisfaction. I know, I know: “We’re gonna do something, something serious and huge, we’re gonna fix stuff.” No yer not. You’re just gonna talk about stuff on the Information-overloaded Dirt Road of Surveillance and Road Pizza.
Everything you say — and write — will be held against you. Not that that matters either. What are They gonna do? What can They do but pretend to be “specialists” called in to save the poor bastard from the Grinning Reaper’s icey-caress in “the nick of time” — so he can run up more bills: Dead Men have no coverage. Eligability is lost immediately upon separation of meat from mind. Whatever. The Beatles were off the mark, but close. It’s not, “all you need is love,” but “all you got left is love.” Find someone to lay with and be etherized. Smoke a doob if it helps you relax.
Good-luck, and Au river. Ciao. See ya,
The Phantom and Staff of /dev/null
Celebration Over You
Recall way back almost a convalescent
scene of clammy sheets stained brown
with blood, the stiff replaced by you.
Night lingered: some kind of…must be this
huge mistake everywhere always like a
popular tune. Go ahead, pull my finger. See?
Even a fart draws nothing but blank stares.
Doctors goofing in surgery talk travel,
long vacations earned rummaging your core
for evidence. So the operation made sense
after all — what’d you expect?
Dollars all around and celebration
over you. May thy name and all it stood for
— what? anything? — rest in peace