I Have Already Apologized to Myself for Being Friends with You, Barbara

and don’t be alarmed if you find yourself in a crack den,

or at least standing

on the bones of its porch,

and if you’re not the star of this documentary,

someone you love is, say, parents of an infant

and the infant

in a kitchen that smells like burning meat and late rent

and you only know

how toxic you are by the dead-river current

winding within you,

but you leave a light on anyway inside you

and the snow falls

into your ungloved hand which holds that feeling

of being left behind on the moon

and you spend Christmas day smoking like a bus’s muffler

in Michigan winter,

and when you arrive home there are months

of messages, alarmed voices

on the other end, asking if you are still alive and to call them.

January 1st : The Time to Reflect on All the Horrible Things that Have Happened in 20 Years

Snow is glitter falling from the sky.

How we hate medicine.

Danny is stuck in the garage again

with beer & still alive.

Daniel’s dancing in Carley’s yellow unitard.

Your kids are too young

to understand how defective I am

visiting men in a halfway home

in Mennonite Lancaster.

The Mennonite Board of Medicine

is revoking my medical license.

G is single and unmarried

to his home-birthing wife.

Ernie, Tracy, Ray Ray & Prince are alive.

It’s 4 am; Mom is huffing out of the emergency room

before I have a bed in rehab—

I miss all of that.