I was lucky enough to hear Paul Monette read from "Love Alone, 18 Elegies for Rog" shortly after the book of poems was printed and shortly before his award-winning memoirs, BORROWED TIME, was released. It's why I have an autographed copy of the poems and my copy of the prose is not autographed. Paul Monette died in 1992. Of the 18 elegies, this one only seems to be the single self-focused poem (until the end which belies that impetus). I wrote a review of Monette's collection of poems for The James White Review while I was still an editor of that publication. -gcb
marginal no change T-4 four-sixty-five as of 12/8 but the labs are notoriously inexact nerdy white-coat sits eyeballing his microscope counts the squiggles in a cubic inch racks them up on his abacus and writes his apt # on the lab slip thus I'm fifteen less than August thirty-five more than June this is not statistically meaningful or am I the walking wounded do not count the counting begins at breakthrough how are my lymph nodes how are they not a mere three-quarters centimeter at the neck in the vampire spot cm and a half in the armpit not suggestive unless they harden or start to throb taking four hundred milligrams RIBAVIRIN b.i.d. the magic dose if results released 1/9 prove to be long-term of course when you cry all day an afternoon can be frightfully long-term but we mustn't muss the curve with personal agendas equal dose ACYCLOVIR ditto twice a day this part purest guesswork doesn't attack HIV but seems to lower the general viral bullshit level and besides the cornflower-blue capsules go quite nicely with the royal-and-white of the RIBAVIRIN rather like the flag of an island nation which I am bowels normal though I peer at each specimen in the bowl like an oracle poking entrails David E who just got back from the Rift Valley where man began says if you flush a toilet five feet south of the Equator the spiral flows clockwise five feet north flows counterclock this is the only non-medical fact I have learned in two years moving now to the head twenty milligrams SINEQUAN for despair no effect at all but may help tip me over into sleep that little church of the dark which bars me all its sacraments add fifteen milligrams DALMANE 2 a.m. for the final knockout not the same as sleep not even the same as night but a full-bore dose of SINEQUAN makes you Lennie in OF MICE AND MEN within two weeks and you eat whole loaves of Wonder Bread till your moon-face waddled body humpty-dumpties off a wall no mouth sores fevers sweats bruises like imploded orchids nothing significant see you in March to put it quite simply I'M DOING FINE or as we say in California DOING GREAT holding a shiv to the listener's throat as it to dare contradiction the test-givers bald numerologists and milligram chemists all my tribe of shamans and not a one knows the iron tests I watched you suffer the six spinals three broncs your bone marrow sippped by a ten-inch needle till you had enough numbers to stump an algebra class pyramided like a Mayan calendar exact to the second for a thousand years by which time the last Mayans stared out of stone eyes at the blue monkeys who swarmed their decimal palaces my medicine men can't see my condition is just a prefix my vast pharmacopoeia no more than a grave not to you my friend who bore so many milligrams we needed a gram balance like a CHARCUTERIE in Paris tests of tests my groping docs might just as well use leeches for all they can touch my invisible disease cracks on the heart don't blip on an EKG thus no treatment sorry we don't cure life Rog I am still in the anteroom of all the useless measures leafing old PEOPLEs reading diplomas deep in my head I hear you the night of the third intrusion your larynx like slush from an extra milliliter's freeze of XYLOCAINE quelling your voice to a strangle for two three hours WHY IS THIS HAPPENING I DON'T KNOW I said all the bells in my voice untarnished and thought how no one had better try to say why either or ever suppose to know the worst take my pills like clockwork because you took yours submit to a week's bleeding because you fought like Theseus for the white-crowned hill of your reason breakthrough is the real thing when these are not just tests of fate ball bearings in a wheel of luck they are fate made visible which of my thirteen pills would I give a dying child which one ought the world to be taking morning and night to feel this strange communion dose by dose this set of printouts clinically healthy why does that sound like a qualification is this how being a hero starts or just dying Ypres and Verdun men have lain down in certain fields with all their unspent years but meanwhile there is the fighting before that the target practice I'm learning how to hold a sword but there is no telling what I will do when I get there stay at my side will you so I don't do anything vain or cease to honor you and all our brothers below the Equator