Angio Gram

Samson in the Ambulance

If your heart attacks
While mine retreats,

Watch my tombstone EKGs
Ratchet back to ordinary
And realize it was a bad time
To be without
An up-to-date
List of my
Near death experiences.

When you get to the truth
Does the truth get to you?

 
Lost in Space

Today my mini-dachshund comes
In her low-down tootsie footing way
To demand to be taken up
Into my lap where she
Can lick my hands and interrupt
The flow of time through both of us.

I try to tell my canine therapist
That we're lost in space
But she doesn't get it.

A dachshund in her second year
Who's never gone farther east on foot
Than Pioneer Park.

She did go to Sun River with us in the car
So now she's an interstate dog.

I brought the "lost in space" subject up
With my daughter Natalie
Whose riposte was,
"We're not lost,
We're on earth."

It's lovely to think so.

 
Self Inflicted Elegy

There are many ways to kill yourself
But basketball?
Please.

There are better ways to die.
"Smothered in naked women"
Was a phrase I learned from
My brother and his friends.

I've tried that from time to time.
But people actually kill themselves
Playing basketball,
Young men and middle aged
Cardiomyopathies,
Former stars such as
Pistol Pete Maravich,
Whose autopsied heart upon examination
Proved to be deformed.

Death by basketball:
If you miss another layup
I'll kill you myself.