“I started my professional activity as a neurologist trying to bring relief to my neurotic patients…”—Sigmund Freud in his only known audio recording – – – My neurotic patience bids me dance by candlelight waiting for answers that come in time. Its quiet causes fright in the noisier set—day-planning superego, demanding id, the rest. To bring relief to my neurotic patience, I smell no end of flowers, and pick none. I wander through fields of impatiens, worrying only about the wind and sun.

(with thanks to Ariel Gomez) “Justus quidem tu es.” – Gerard Manley Hopkins Minus one gene, cells that swing red or green— fascia or hormone— should groan, cease, dissolve to cell-ghost and bone. When staying true would have meant giving death’s due, instead they became something new. When faithfulness to what we knew about what they need would have meant a fatal bleed, cells knew better, needed less— were simple, simply were, and let themselves have happiness.

for Julie Bianca Dahl Surgeons in an airport bus are lions at a zoo. They laze, dimly happy to see you. Tails barely flickering in the stagnant savannah air, Khaki pants sticking to pleather seat cushions, They look up only when you mention meat. Their forearms are clean, but you can smell the blood, See the line of skin roughened from washing. I tell them that I paint the body parts they move. We speak of organs as objects of art, The pinking liver finding itself alive in a new home, The invigorated pancreas, spurting kidneys—oh, joy of piss! Above…