for Amy in Hospital
For now you cannot move;
No more can I,
And neither of us dare remove
The beam in love's long eye.
Wide eyed in sleep what do you see?
Betrayal in a kiss?
A traitor come to haunt this room
Made sweet by flowers' mimicry?
If you remembered this,
The serpent hiss and sullen boom
Of oxygen down rubber veins
Into a plastic womb
While locked outside your caul I stood
And prayed aloud for you to stay
With me, you'd not presume
Me Judas back to claim Christ's blood.
This is too stale an air to breathe
For all the flowers' bloom.
What's done is dead but stinks on still,
Dried roses perfumed to deceive.
Locked here, what shall we prove?
No more than that the rendered bill
Of pain has grown too big to pay
From the small wealth we share
And we must move again. So rise
And come with me; we'll find a way
To force the door, declare
The flowers dead, and walk away.