RICH MAN, POOR MAN; OR A SLOW BOAT TO CHINA

Katka and I have left our new $1000 Kerry Blue,

Dasha, in Orchard Park, a burb of Buffalo, and come

To Kona, trying to smooth over, this time in Hawaii,

The last bad year.

When I talked to a new broker

And said we were taking the trip with liquid money

From bonds called in, he said, having saved all

Your life, at your age, you should enjoy it. He didn't

Know we never saved a cent, that the million

We have l inherited and have a good pension.

Here

At The Inn in Halualoa overlooking Kailua, I continue

To have astonishing dreams. Last night my father,

Dead these 30 years, appeared, for the first time,

Smashing, quite insane, his Buick through a garage

Door. We knew he was OK again when he set a world's

Record driving backwards a whole mile. Was he the cause

Of this year's madness and the episodes before? Or was it

Just the disease they now call bi-polar? I awoke

Trembling and thought and thought about my kids

Seeing their father mad, whether they believe he is,

With all these pills I take, claimed back from the abyss,

And whether they are able to trust me ever again after

A manic climax when I struck my wife and, according

To her, in her presence, propositioned them both.

I have broken the kapu, the Sacred Laws.

We drove

Yesterday to Honaunau, the Place of Refuge where

Ancient priests absolved taboo breakers; but no priests

Were there, and I am still guilty of my crimes.

At night here the mongrel dogs of the poor bark

And howl, a chorus about inequity. You don't see

Them by day but they cross the lawn of this fancy Inn

At night and shit where the guests are likely to step.

There are some things money cannot buy. My expensive

Psychiatrist, back home, for whom I write this poem,

Can’t make much of the psychic information I give him.

I talk and weep; he adjusts the dosage. I hope

The Indian surgeon who gave me this partially

Artificial heart, an act which triggered this recent

Lapse from mens sana, is right when he said,

As though out of the wisdom of the inscrutable East—

“Time heals all things."

We are half way there.