The Lab

We're waiting to hear our numbers.

Later we brace ourselves for stings.

I saw mine smacking its thin lips,

Looking like a fat greedy fly.

All around I see perspiring bodies

That fear how they'll be graded

Under judging microscopes shortly.

There never is an essay portion,

Defending your brokenness.

This feels like a beauty contest,

No chance for old hearts and livers.

The red ink is most unforgiving:

Fix these and come back again,

Say the numbers looking very grim.

Centillion Ways to Die

Hospital, hospice, laid in bed,
On freezing streets, in fancy rooms.
In timeless spaces, sunless skies,
Cubicles, prison cells...and tombs. 
In front of judges, parents, kids,
Audience—friend or strange—their eyes
Still staring from behind the lids
That speak the feelings left unsaid. 
With prayers, with grating cries, with sighs.
Unseen, unknown; unloved, unwed....
By force or will, with guns.  In wombs
Of girls whose souls have parted too.
Kisses on cheeks and pale foreheads,
Holding of hands, and swallowed tears,
With lonely aches and greedy fears.
Mystery, grief...then peace one year,
as pain searches, with wings unspread,
for warm and kind suffering peers
to help release the inner dead.