My Remstar Machine

All part of growing old and being a stupid male.

Remstar Machine

 

I didn’t want the world to know

but I’m having an affair. I do feel guilty about it!

I am having a long term affair.

So long it will last till the day I die.

 

I am addicted to a machine,

my Remstar, Type BF, Class2, from Pennsylvania!

I sleep attached to my American respirator.

In Its drowsy pleasurable air stream.

 

This affair is not based in love it's

more like dependency. I feel guilty about it.

"Guilty" for the years of discomfort

I bestowed on my wife by bellowing snoring.

 

"Guilty"  for ignoring symptoms of incremental tiredness

that made me sleep pausing at red traffic lights.

"Guilty" of letting lethargy creep into our married life, as a parent and as a husband. Guilty as charged!

 

Now the golden stream of air from the machine

holds back the weak prolapsed tissue in the throat

Tissue that caused the noxious, snoring roar.

My sleep is deepened twenty fold and I wake refreshed.

 

I look ridiculous with my strappy helmet and writhen tube.

On cold nights secret passages in my skull convey chilly airs.

In passing they refrigerate my brain with odd internal chills.

Air seeps inside my gut causing intestinal bloat.

 

My gelatine, azure blue, face mask clamps to my nose.

The machine whirrs on its life saving air.

Extra oxygen that at one time saved me from a stroke.

Before my rampant blood pressure was controlled.

 

Now comes my sentence. I am guilty as charged.

The noise of the machine is a hiss just above silence.

My wife, after years of suffering nasal roar,

found its treble whine unbearable.

 

She had to leave our room. Sleep elsewhere.

In that moment she becomes less wife more sister.

More best friend! No more to feel her exquisite warmth.

I morn the loss of soothed emotions, eased by her touch.

 

I am guilty as charged! I appeal to the judge supreme.

But the guilty must be condemned.

My Remstar machine! It is plastic and hard!

I cannot live without it! It is a cruel mistress!

　

　

　

Author's Note

I intended to make readers roar with laughter when reading this. I tried! I just couldn't do it!

Reviews

[alesuriko]

Overall this was a really good poem. Not entirely... laugh riot, but it is funny in the sense that you can laugh about the misfortune of several people's fate as they grow older. So this is what we're reduced to and left with, is what you're left thinking. It's more unfortunate than hilarious.

[Thurston]

Yes, it is a wee bit sad. First, as a poem it deserves to stand alone in a worthy life-style magazine publication. In stanza 8, move "just" two words to the left. Assonance becomes. It really is a heartfelt poem. So much you find in everyday things. The domestic is dramatic.
You record the milestones of this nasal millstone. Impacting and creating other milestones. So is our life measured. Which is why you wanted a laugh and why they were rueful grins instead.

[Mauricio Montoya]

Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Excellent write my friend.