Poem 411

An aunt of Jill’s institutionalised in hospital at Silverstream with inexorably advancing MS or something similar … both obese and bedridden my point in the poem is that she was killed not just by her physical disease but by the mental wasting and shrinkage of long term invalidity, horizons contracting to the next meal …

… unfortunate name for a hospital … for me ‘silver stream’ evokes urine … the pungent smell of which permeates this poem …

( I particularly like the image of wintering muscles … )

Two Deaths

Her daughter said the death was surprisingly
easy considering it had taken
twenty years

the paralysis coming from her feet
a great lumbering beetle wintering
muscles putting organs to sleep
like countries curling in on themselves

the paralysis
moving in through her eyes
                                                         Silverstream
river of a room kidney-tainted
        features blurring away
        inflating
        infantilising her
she cried like a child
at the imposed diet

         one little potato with dinner ...

long scaling her by different faces
these two slow deaths met last night
at her heart
                        and shook hands