The new disease came, but not without warning.
The drugs were a toxic combo that kept the sick going
another year. I loved how you talked in your sleep
about free will. Your clothes smelled, but the blood
levels were normal. Now I have seen the sun god:
this is what I thought when I first saw you—the face,
the bearing—but perfection of form meant nothing
to you, and we were all just souls carrying around
a corpse. I smoked hashish as the government slept.
Drug companies held parties in Arizona & Florida.  
The profit motive always lives. For those of us who didn’t
sell well in the bars, it felt like revenge of the nerds.
Goaded by your hand, I wrote poems, an essence
squeezed out of this matter, what is memory now.