40


         My
40:   A Human ^Comedy

Canto I

A round number birthday again. Daughter with flu–
I say ‘No temperture!’ though ‘No fever’ is heard;
so understood, never a moment mistaken.

Zero average kinetic energy? Perhaps
space, save background radiation. There’s no true ‘void’:
existence is normal is temperture.

But tell me which is worse – is it our sweating Earth
or illness spread for lucre guised as ‘temperture’?
This is well understood, be ye not mistaken.

Forty years is a temperture as meaningless
as any other; lying whoring Germs take heed:
the patient’s fever rises-- we must heal ourselves!


Canto II

I’d crucify Freud’s Christ complexity if I could,
but cancer of the Christ always rises from the grave.
My temperture never quits         smoking cigars.

More than journey’s midway (law: energy conserved),
having robbed and spent my future wonder-, worry-,
and soapbox-ing all over other people’s souls

with “No more sui-, homo-, regi-, geno-, omni-cide logic
(as before/since Alexander),
‘if you would heal the world, kill the germs’” or even,

“Thieves, give back your thieving selves!” and finally,
“You, Illness, bear your soul burden best you can,
every germ back to the place of the skull for itself!”.


Canto III

No more epistles entailed City to City,
I renounce one citizenship; I'm iso-insulating
‘gainst all fever chills ‘cause, Pilgrim, meaning is upstream.