Watching the Three Stooges, After Fifty, in the Hospital

Let the pie in the face become your Bible,

the finger-poke your lightning bolt.
The world according to Curly begins
with the belly, then a head charge,
a bone eaten for breakfast with eggshells.
 
Tools like saws and chisels are blunted
when struck against his head, as if nothing
could ever touch that screwball scalp
or slow down that mad bull run.
Praise the eye-poke or hair pull
of Moe, that sage with squinting eyes,
who showed you in his hand how much hair
he yanked from an ebullient Larry.

 
Now the children of your children
sit before the tube or the wall screen
and learn the finger in the eye prophecy,
the head in the vise breaking teeth;

and you, in a hospital bed after silliness,
sewn up from the body's bad joke.
 
Later, when stillness settles like an x-ray,
your hear the most perfect line,
the child in you laughing at its insistent plea

that you imagine Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard
paged on the public address, as they weave
through the hall on carts, ride the snorting trot
of horses to surgery, Moe's sour grape face
wanting to pummel that tenor to a gasp
and shell him with scatterbrained buckshot.