H e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s b e r g

N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i v e s E d i t i o n

JANINE POMMY VEGA

Reading Your Last Book, Fame & Death

Into the chophouse incinerator we go,

It's a Wednesday night

in a week of rain

I've just come from the hospital

where I had the greatest rest

in years-a real vacation:

frequent naps and three squares a day

I'm back with the same

medicine as you for the failing heart

and watch through your eyes unflinching

the round of events your last days, Fame & Death-

reality jostled by the finite witness, the bundle of

synapses, the no more with this ego

come what may.

To circle and circle your head in the photo

with my fingers, like rubbing your stomach

in the old days, intimacy

not entirely forgotten,

Old lover, you said as you signed my book,

I might say, lover, teacher, friend,

and look toward my own gaze through the fabric

at what was real, what is not, the who I ams

that might not climb again, best the uphill

slope, or swallow without hesitation

the final nothing at the top.

The body slides back,

a memory in the egg of the void;

to be quit of all this-reminded

in the medicines of the need for constancy,

a mothering of the heart-I turn to your last days,

your dream with Peter, your vision

of historic funeral with the lovers talking,

The starry nursery rhymes of a bright old child.

How dapper you look in those clothes-

the shirt from Goodwill, the cashmere scarf:

a well dressed bard.

I love these last words,

this last time with you unencumbered

by futures, a last little human time.

Willow, NY, June 2006