No Joke

Watching the one you love die slowly is no joke.
Perhaps that sounds flippant, even callous.
Some might expect something more passionate,
the rhetoric cranked up, each line a howl.
There’s howling all right, but others supply it,
exactly as we do, watching King Lear
or reading Ginsberg – although his ‘best minds’
were simply his close friends. (Lost the thread
there for a moment; distraction, even
for an unforgiving minute, is welcome,
including the time it takes to type this.)
Because the howling in here never stops.
The howling’s no use, but it never stops.
Let me turn up the volume. Is it audible now?
Watching the one you love die slowly is no joke.

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