Ad Infinitum

Proclaiming he has found a cure for death,

my neighbor who lives overhead displays

a capsule on his palm then clenches it

and turns away before I see too much.

But I've already smelled the paper bags

of mice he dumps into the morning trash

and heard him flushing flocks of parakeets

whose feathers sometimes back up in my bowl.

He calls such failures "transient," predicts

complete success once he has found a way

to teach the dead to swallow and digest

the endless life he has to offer them.

The problem as he sees it simplified is death,

which he must overcome in order to cure death.