Loving Angels Instead

Cherry

By Silver Spun Sand

Sat, 10 Jan 2015
  • 1253 reads
2 comments
 
Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage; 
Minds innocent and quiet take that for a hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love and in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above enjoy such liberty. 
Richard Lovelace
 
What’s Christmas without candles?
The nurses do their best here – except, 
No Naked Flames – not in my room.  The reason, 
my keeper – this damned machine I’m hooked up to...
pumping oxygen into my knackered lungs 
and,  We wouldn’t want to be blown away
in a puff of smoke, now would we?
Perish the thought.
 
It’s purgatory, in this place...though – a kind of 
halfway house you could call it...a stopover,
if you like, between this world and the next,
although, at times, it feels more like a prison.
No locks on the doors. Instead, iron bars 
on the windows. What the hell for?
 
Health & Safety somewhat over-zealous
these days. God forbid one of us should fall...
from one, by accident, naturally, and yet, 
I’d be more than glad, bordering on ecstatic, 
if I could hasten the inevitable. Oh, before you go, 
do look at my cards. Folk amaze me, at times.
I guess they meant well, present company excepted,
but they didn’t stop to think, not one of them. 
Take, for example, yours. 
 
A Happy New Year, it yells at me, in tacky glitter. 
For pity’s sake, I ask you,  how impossible is that? 
By the way, so sorry I screwed things up for you. 
A lot better things you could be doing on Christmas Eve, 
like getting rat-arsed, as usually you did; me at home,
peeling sprouts, enough to feed the five thousand; 
namely friends and family.  Yours, naturally.
 
Tough shit! This year, I’m otherwise engaged –
busy dying, in this out-of-the-way, idyllic, 
rural hospice.  Oh, and you might have noticed 
I dropped the divorce proceedings; far better be
a  thorn in your side, for now until eternity.  
Guilt makes an unwelcome bedfellow,
especially in the small hours 
 
and I can only hope my replacement...the one 
you groomed especially, gives birth to that sprog 
you wanted, but only after radiation put paid 
to my fertility.  Selfish, I agree, as you said, 
putting myself first. 
 
No last goodbyes – no sad songs, no sentimentality,
it’s off to Mass you go.  I still love you, you know, 
and when the clock strikes twelve, pray for me, would you, 
I won’t wake up tomorrow, Christmas or no?  Unless,
you fancy playing God...right here right now; give me
my freedom, and I’ll grant you yours.  After all,
what is Christmas,  sans candles?
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Comments

Submitted by Parson Thru on

What an image of isolation and hopelessness, Tina. Been a visitor to something similar in the last few weeks. I can imagine some of those thoughts. The unthinking card.

It could be me missing a trick, but is "put pay" meant to read "put paid"?

Great piece, as ever.

Hope all is well.

Parson Thru

Submitted by Silver Spun Sand on

PT - indebted to you for noticing my 'deliberate mistake'smiley and many thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts, 

Tina