Dignity

Dignity like health
better hope you won’t need it

Think a moment about loss of health
which is easier to contemplate
than humiliation

Things go along fine
money in the bank
your car is humming
your sex life swell
when suddenly your heart stops strumming
or cancer eats your tongue

You live in doctors’ offices
waiting for news
bills accreting like a viral disease

Your insurance company
thrives on your facts
you paper your bedroom
with the questions they ask

You grow weaker and poorer
all of a piece
until you expire a beggar

Dignity will leave you much the same
its guarantors denying they know you
or replaced by strangers
with no use for your name
who give you a number
then deny your claim
the devil take your honor

The matters are really the same
to take your dignity
you’re filed down
abandoned by health
you’re filed away
or vice or versa

11/2-11/4/95, 6/13-6/15/96, 4/18/98

Coypright 1996, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

Posted with permission