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[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Taking Aspirin

Go, boats of the blood,
Carry your cargo of ease to the ports of the body,
Unload surcease upon the swollen toe,
The ache-contorted finger,
Deceive the frazzled nerve ends into sleep.
Shove off, cockswains, you're loaded.

Here's health to you. I wash you on your way.
Waiting for you to deliver,
I dream of horsebacked statues pale as chalk
Erected to the discoverers of aspirin
Who walk in radiance by the streams of Lethe,
Bayer-assed, in starched hospital dickies.

X. J. Kennedy
The Lords of Misrule: Poems 1992-2001
The Johns Hopkins University Press