of course, I had lost much blood
maybe it was a different kind of
dying
but I still had enough left to wonder
about
the absence of fear.

it was going to be easy: they had
put me in a special ward they had
in that place
for the poor who were
dying.
—the doors were a little thicker
—the windows a little smaller
and there was much
wheeling in and out of
bodies
plus
the presence of the priest
giving last
rites.

you saw the priest all the time
but you seldom saw a
doctor.

it was always nice to see a 
nurse—
they rather took the place of
angels
for those who 
believed in that sort of
thing.

the priest kept bugging me.

“no offense, Father, but I’d
rather die without
it,” I whispered.

“but on your entrance application you
stated ‘Catholic.’”

“that was just to be
social…”

“my son, once a Catholic, always a
Catholic!”

“Father,” I whispered, “that’s not
true…”

the nicest thing about the place were 
the Mexican girls who came in to
change the sheets, they giggled, they
joked with the dying and
they were
beautiful.

and the worst thing was
the Salvation Army Band who
came around at
5:30 a.m.
Easter Morning
and gave us the old
religious feeling—horns and drums
and all, much
brass and
pounding, tremendous volume
there were 40 or so
in that room
and that band
stiffened a good
10 or 15 of us by
6 a.m.

and they rolled them right out
to the morgue elevator
over to the west, a very 
busy elevator.

I stayed in Death’s waiting room for
3 days.
I watched them roll out close to
fifty.

they finally got tired of waiting
for me
and rolled me
out of there.

a nice black homosexual fellow
pushed me
along.

“you want to know the odds of
coming out of that ward?”
he asked.

“yeah.”

“50 to one.”

“hell, 
got any 
smokes?”

“no, but I can get you
some.”

we rolled along
as the sun managed to come through the
wire-webbed windows
and I began to think of
that first drink when
I got
out.