Little Sickness Song

I measure the days

in medicine trays oh my

Sunday through Sunday

cloudy or sunny

my pillbox is by my side oh my

my pillbox by my side

And again this morning

the porcelain this morning

cold so white inside oh my

so cold so white inside

Taking the tablets

prescription and habit

five times a day

for all of my days, oh

how many days? oh my, oh my

INVIRASE

The medicine feels like acid inside me

eating away the virus,

and I know I never would have written that down

if I had waited until I said Now,

now I will write that poem about pain,

and not about skipping

through a forest-primeval, along the rivulet,

ignoring the garbage in the stream,

trash tangled in birch roots-bones half buried

in the water and the bank.

As mucus engulfs the ulcerous membranes

and the pain subsides to tolerable,

I dream a law in physics, a body

set in motion that nothing can stop again.