Inside the Dialysis Machine

1.

matter is all we have, and all we haveto lose

is inside the dialysis machine,excess water drained,

phosphorous and sodium like crumbsbrushed from a sleeve,

as if separation were the real art,the blood destroyed and rebuilding itself

like notes of a song at the moment of inspiration,not created, but suddenly remembered

when all other noise inside the composer's brainhas been siphoned away:

inside the dialysis machine, all symmetryis broken symmetry, the illusion

of the fixed interior revealed like a clothswiped from the top of a birdcage,

a hand reaching through the little metal dooraltering the motion inside

so that when the blood collideswith the dialystate, the lethal cells are divided

from the clean, almost systematically,as if there is a decision, the mind of the cell

unlocked, that single orbiting thoughtthat, if we are quiet enough,

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pours through every opening, the frequencyof the electron made audible, a finger

dipped in water and circling the rimof a glass: today, in the salt mines of Ohio

scientists are watching vats of waterthrough computer screens,

trying to observe, for the first time,proton decay, a bit of light that will demonstrate

how all matter dissolves, eventually, into energy:inside the dialysis room, even our bodies

are reduced to their frequencies, plugged in,as if their diminishment was powering

the machines, as if the purpose of motionwas to make matter clean,

stirring the batter of us until the lumpsscatter and dissolve, while

on the other side of the room, a nurse,absentmindedly, divides the pills-

one blue, one red, one green-into the pyramid of paper cups

she 's balanced on a tray:

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2.

if you believe the spirit can be siphonedaway, you must also believe

in its return: at fifteen, for instance,I spent a year unraveling

and being sewn back together,one long thread of me

being fed into the dialysis machine,like a reel of film through a projector,

as if I could lay myself down,frame by frame, into the plastic tube

and make my life seen: ice chips,blankets and saline heated

to 98 degrees, a life reducedto its necessities, not just for me,

but for all of us in the dialysisroom, leaving ourselves

at the velocity of trains, rattlingthrough our chills and our coughing fits:

Charlie, with his ritual of phrase, "timeto get the oil changed":

Wendy outtalking any audience-a husband dead, a toy poodle yipping

towards the grave-until her own eyesfinally closed, and she curled up

inside the little padded basketof her brain: and Abbie, the only girl

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my age, sixteen and a prisonerof headphones, humming the Beatles,

though I kept hearing:"we all live

in a dialysis machine, dialysismachine, dialysis machine":

she loved Jackson Pollock, too:"he makes the paint so alive,"

she said, "you can almost hear it sing":and why not believe, at sixteen, that a man

could paint himself free of his body,not just symbolically,

but weaving above the canvas,like a cut boxer across the ring:

why not believe, at fifteen, that a mancould be stripped to his veins,

that it was possible to live wholly insidethe dialysis machine, my imperfections-

zits, bad grades-being scrubbedaway-like night drained of its bats-

while I emptied toward sleep,my body deflating, buoyant

as a tablecloth tossedacross the waves, my body

thin as a handkerchiefpulled from a sleeve:

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3. Pollock At Work

what does it mean: the falsepattern everywhere, the windshifted

weather map his cigaretteleaves in the air, paint-splattered

boots, an elaborate cage of lacesstrapping down the leather tongue:

is this the end of speech, of the insistenceof the brush: inside the dialysis room,

a party's being made, streamers hung,our bodies improvising from the sheet music

of our DNA, being drawn through machines,like breath through an instrument,

something terribly nimble...