Phone Calls from Home

I still receive phone calls and emails mostly from

cracked-up friends caught up in huge dreams, with no hope,

just booze and crazy American madness.

Most of their calls are flashes—“Call me back.”

They want some recognition of where they are

and it’s true, I was there, worse off than most of them.
but I wonder if they realize when their callS arrive?

When I’m dead in the library, when I am frozen in asleep.

They talk of a long driveway leading
to a four car garage, rose garden, blue skies, fruit trees,
beautiful women, a new car each month, red carpet freeways

and dream of fairy-tales in America the beautiful.

I’m 69 years old now and can’t go on retirement;

Oh! How much this flesh had to suffer, yet cannot die;

Hmm! How much this heart had to bear, yet cannot break;

raises questions that these painful tears cannot tell.

I still receive their phone calls and emails.

One came this morning when I was shuddering

At the surgeon’s knife, searching for quivering life
but death chooses its own time; not till all evils are borne.