Obsession with health can easily take over
from sex as life’s major problem,
though sex feeds it like kindling,
for isn’t that moist and warm intimacy
the perfect vehicle of transmission,
the kind doctors say there’s no cure for
and, a little voice whispers, the explanation
of half your ailments, not to say the penalty
for having the soul and habits of a whore?

It’s the perfect solution, a way of life,
filling in chinks of time like smoking or cruising,
until it becomes the major mental activity
and especially a torment in the night,
as you enumerate your symptoms over and over
to a doctor who never existed, a Miracle of Sympathy
willing to take complete care of you,
saying everything’s all right, saying it
so you believe him and assuring you
your symptoms aren’t serious….

But I’m not reassured, I’m furious.
He’s implying, isn’t he, that it’s all my imagination
when I know something’s surely there
and if looked into more thoroughly could be found?
On the other hand, I don’t want anything
to be found—once defined
it would be hard to live with, and scary
to have to defy Medical Authorities
who want to put me on drugs with Side Effects—
I have an ineradicable suspicion
that all drugs have to be poison.

And if I admit my symptoms aren’t yet dangerous—
after all, I’m still walking around and nothing shows—
an even worse torment to endure is
I’m convinced that before it’s too late
I could be cured.