Personal Poem

8:30 a.m. April 21^st I get ready
For my eye appointment my left eye
Has a macular hole when I close
My right eye and focus with my left eye
Heads shrink and distort into Francis Bacon
Portraits. Breakfast is delicious and easy
Bowl of strawberries peaches pineapple
Under a big mound of whipped cream
Toast slathered with Bonne Maman cherry jam
6:00 p.m. I’m looking at tabletop face cradles
For vitrectomy surgery I have to keep my head
Bowed for a full week with 15-minute breaks
Following surgery on my macular hole there’s no
Date for that as yet meanwhile I read Dévotion
A poem by Michel Deguy which begins “Il faut
Que tu sois double pour être toi-même,” “One must
Be double to be oneself,” how do I pull that off
Pray tell I have to go now and blow my nose
Can part of me be someone else looking at myself
Actually, I think that happens a lot
There’s the wacko anomalous me and the sober
Apollyonic me gazing down from the sky
No no no that’s completely bogus there’s
The me me and the other me who’s not here
At the moment he’s at the Deux Magot café in Paris
With his head bowed reading Being and Nothingness