Noel Negele

At the Hospital

It is infuriating
how the fear of death
makes you so pathetic.

How you suddenly like life,
enjoy sadness,
regret the wasted days.

The peculiar thing is,
as they say,
that when you lose something
you understand
how important it was,

but when having a near death experience
you haven’t lost anything,
not yet

but the mere possibility
of losing
this life you have

this unimportant little life
with these few romances
the bromide blood ties
the ideas and contemplation
the fun and the years
and the mistakes
and the small acts of kindness
and the small efforts of creativity

it all coruscates
into a total
that in your mind
is so beautiful
that besides feeling
incredibly ungrateful

you also feel irritated
by the cowardice
you are washed in

precisely because of the beauty
precisely because you are not ready
to leave
not until you grow old
and the quality in your life
lessens enough
for you to become proud enough

to be ready enough to go.

And you are hungry suddenly
to live, to try
to climb towards the goals
and you don’t care as much
about the relationships
that went bad,
about your dissatisfying paychecks
or your appearance
and you almost pray
for another shot

and all the stupid sadness you had
appears so wasteful
like a meal run cold
over an argument.

Care less or care more?