After By Manny Grimaldi

imagine if we’d gone on

much longer,

if it happened again

and again

an old friend spoke—

you scared little man

my sweet friend

my sweet from end to end

bring a cup of joe

sit here on the stoop 

slurping pain

let it happen once again

after the morning noise

where I thought much,

felt little—evening came—

and my heart was breaking,

no one was there to notice,

because I hadn’t noticed them

Manny Grimaldi is a former respiratory therapist in Louisville, KY accustomed to extremes of peaceful dying to coagulate gore and fecal matter spewing everywhere during cardiopulmonary resuscitation.  He is divorced from his former life and now writes, hosting back pain, shoulder pain, and neck pain from poor posture at the computer.  One of the miracles of life as Manny sees it is in both the moment a person “sees” something, and the moment they “leave the body”.  Not to be ridiculous, both are beautiful.  He hardly writes about either, but always wanted to put that in a bio.  Manny publishes, yadda yadda yadda, performs, yadda yadda, and edits — but would write nonetheless were any of these not true.