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Currajah

[a Walleah Press blog]

 

JENNIFER COMPTON

 

Cosmic Ordering

 

I told her – When you are writing on the piece of paper

your orders to the Universe, be sure to make it very clear

that you want a challenge that does not involve suffering.

You have learned enough from dear old Auntie Suffering.

 

I told her – There is no sickness in your hand that I can see.

So why are you sitting in the wheelchair with a chemo haircut

and only one tit? They won’t give you a 3 euro discount unless

you have a disability card. Are you planning to die just when I

got to really like you? That hardly seems cricket, damn you!

 

She told me – Don’t visit this weekend because I am in hospital.

That stuff I told you about that we both thought was stress is in

fact a tumour in my brain. All that weakness on my left side plus.

And now they have found plenty of stuff in my lungs, excuse me

while I go downstairs for a cigarette. Maybe my daughter will take

a lesson from me, I thought she would die before me. And so did I.

 

And the witch in my hip bites me and my hand jerks and breaks

the second to last wedding present Belgian glass. Downwards

is not possible, I drop newspapers onto the shards and spilt wine.

To mark the place for the someone else who will have to clean up

my mess. He had swept the other glass off the table that very night

but it did not break. Mine broke. We have one glass left. To drink

together to, alas, exactly the way things are. To Old Mother Death.

And all her relations, all the simpering attendant agonies and griefs.