Foreword: This poem is formally dedicated to Norm MacDonald, the funniest guy I [don’t] know.
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“How do you do today, moth? Don’t be shy.”
“Bozhe moi, doctor, where to begin?
Beset with cold sweats, seized by spells of shakes, I
Feel my fevered fate fast wearing thin.
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For my boss, Mr. Gregor-Alinnovitch, year
After year, have I labored away.
Now my back, as my spirit, has broken, I fear,
Laid to waste by this bitter ballet.
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Weary, I wake in the night, nearly numb,
To a woman, from cruel, dreamless sleep,
Whom once called I wife, though now what has become
Of that life, I know not, and I weep.
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Aleksendria, doctor, my youngest, she fell,
As so many, e’er wintertide draws,
Unforgiving, the frostbitten beckoning knell
Tolled her claim into icicled claws.
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I avoid my son’s sad, sunken stare, for I fear
(This the most painful pill I’ve to swallow)
The same cowardice, daily, I meet in my mirror,
Now the love I once bore him rings hollow.
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Doctor, sometimes I won’t feel at all like a moth,
But a spider whose end is at hand,
An inferno of flames, ‘neath my web, dance and froth,
As I swing by my last silken strand.
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Had I one kernel of courage, I might
Find within me the strength for to draw
Up the cocked, loaded gun by my bedside one night,
And escape from this hellish façade.”
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“Merciful mothballs! I grieve for your pain,
But you know I’m a foot doctor, right?”
“Of course, comrade doc, I don’t mean to complain,
I’m just here ’cause you left on the light.”
Buttercup's House 