Wake up. Remember to take your before-breakfast
pills, and wait half an hour to eat. Drop your eye drops
in, try for accuracy, so they don’t roll down
your cheeks. Shake spray bottle and spray inside
your nostrils. Snuffle in. Insert inhaler into the aero-chamber.
Suck the other end, breathe in s-l-o-w-l-y, make no noise.
Hold. Release. Rinse. Brush your teeth. Fill the flosser
reservoir with lukewarm water, keep the tip
loosely in your closed mouth, turn power—then
water switch—ON. Turn both OFF before you open
your—agghh! Wipe your glasses. Towel your hair
and clothes. Now eat breakfast at a leisurely
pace. Take your with-breakfast pills. Mix
your fiber powder with water, glug it, best you can,
with your after-breakfast vitamins. Pour a quarter-cup
of brown mouth antiseptic, swish carefully,
your cheeks inflated like a puffer fish,
to keep your new implant uninfected…28, 29, 30.
Spit. Wait half an hour before that second cup
of java. Fetch your exercise mat and weights.
30 minutes: leg lifts, pelvic tilts, bridges,
then stand up for butt squats, cat/camel, donkey kicks—
all to keep that newish knee in place, the undone one
in shape, bursitis in your hips from getting worse.
Now, darken the room, sit on your mat, attempt meditation
to calm the qualms of getting only health maintenance done.

At last, your desk. A quarter-poem eked out in draft
before it’s time to ingest the pre-lunch pill,
and wait half an hour. Focus on each bite of lunch
and savor. Now the daily walk, triply salubrious.
(Patience, while the two dogs stop and sniff!) Then,
your workout again, followed by meditation,
followed by pre-dinner pills, followed by waiting,
followed by dinner (remember: Slow Down!),
followed by nodding off in front of the TV,
followed by jolting awake to repeat Rxes for eyes, nose,
and lungs, and all dental ablutions, including washing
your night guard that prevents grinding, followed, in bed,
by reading less than a page of your current escape novel (Anxious
People, oops),
before you insert guard over lower teeth, and fall dead
asleep.