‘Complications’ by James B. Nicola

I used to be politer, but more boring,
my friends say. They could take me anywhere.
My conversation wasn’t overbearing.
My actions seemed as if I didn’t care

more than was apt. Now I appear half-crazy,
they tell me, and act drunk before I drink.
I babble, slur my sentences, feel dizzy,
and talk, invariably, before I think.

One friend (a doctor) says there are diseases
with hidden symptoms, like a certain flu
the victim of which neither coughs nor sneezes,
runs temperatures, nor shakes with an ague.
 
—What invisible ailment are you speaking of?
—How horrible! —And what are we to do?,
My friends pipe. But the doctor knows—it’s love—
yes, even though he still has not met you!

So, till you come, my cohorts’ condemnations
continue. Till then, though, I’d rather be
the crudest sufferer of complications
than courteous, and die of atrophy.

James B. Nicola’s nonfiction book Playing the Audience won a Choice award. His two poetry collections, published by Word Poetry, are Manhattan Plaza (2014) and Stage to Page: Poems from the Theater (2016). He won a Dana Literary Award, a People’s Choice award (from Storyteller) and a Willow Review award; was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and once for a Rhysling Award; and was featured poet at New Formalist. A Yale graduate as well as a composer, lyricist, and playwright, James has been giving both theater and poetry workshops at libraries, literary festivals, schools, and community centers all over the country. His children’s musical Chimes: A Christmas Vaudeville premiered in Fairbanks, Alaska, where Santa Claus was rumored to be in attendance on opening night.