Rufus the Diabetic Bear
You said you needed living proof, so
take a long look at me: I am sick inside
Not with unrequited love or longing
Not with disillusioned misplaced rage and
not with a beat-down broken old heart
You say you want a revolution,
but after we smash the State and stick it to the Man
I will still wake up to the same bloody battle
The same aftermath of spent test strips and dulled syringes
I will still wake up inside of a body at war with itself, on the constant verge of taking it all away from me
for good, forever
Rufus the diabetic Bear has special felt hearts
sewn onto all the parts of his plush body
where diabetic children are taught to stab themselves
and press another hour of life into their war-torn bodies
And blaming it on genetics is as effective
as blaming it on God, and I would like
to sew a zipper onto Rufus the Diabetic Bear
so I could split him open from his liver to his lights
and find out once and for all what went wrong
And blaming it on God is as effective
as blaming it on the sun and the stars,
and if I had a chance to meet God
I would take him by the shirt collar
and shake and shake and shake
until he gave an explanation
And Rufus the Bear may wear out
stripped down to split seams and frayed fluff
but he will never need dialysis
and Rufus the Bear may fall apart in the washing machine
but he will never know the helpless terror
of losing his black button eyesight to retinopathy
And Rufus the bear may lose his felt hearts
to age and ailing fabric, but he will
never lose the nerve endings in his extremities,
never know the humiliation of amputation
You say you want a revolution
while I tap my foot in line at the pharmacy
and wince at the rising cost of imported insulin
and pray to the not-so-distant gods
of ophthalmology and endocrinology
You smooth out the wrinkles in your
post-governmental society soundbytes
while I wobble on my tightrope
just 1/33 of a cc away from the abyss
one drop of clear liquid from losing it all, forever
So go on and do your thing
Smash your State
Stick it to your Man
Spill all the blood and spout all the rhetoric
your dark and shortsighted agenda may require
Tomorrow I will still wake up
inside of a body incompatible with anarchy
I will still wake up behind gradually dimming headlights
with a stick shift that kicks and jerks
with a rusting transmission and a lot of mileage
I never asked for, I never earned
I will still wake up to the throb of high blood pressure
and the thickness in my sickly stubborn veins
Come what may, tomorrow
I will still wake up dying
just like you
just like all of us
except Rufus the Bear
Rufus the Bear will never wake up at all