Some poems following my "brush with death" and one-week hospital stay
April 1, 2023
In modern healing, one seeks
a linear path across states of being,
from ill-health to recuperation,
from pain to its absence,
from suffering to ease.
Though doctors may differ
on superimposing high and low points
in the treatment path, the truth is
the path may not be a linear one
and distortions that result
may additionally cause new pain.
Might a core element be the simple passage
of time? The alternation of daylight
with darkness may incline us to believe
time's passage is a digital thing.
In fact, any passage of "healing" time
is merely a series of approximations,
from points of high activity to low,
from progress along a path to chaos
irrevocably interrupting that same path.
Doctors seek daily goals, as do patients,
but "daily" is an illusion. The timing of
your hospital stay may float -
don't let its duration disappoint you.
April 2, 2023
Monsters come out at night.
They tie you up with tubes and wires
across your body, flashing buzzing lights
that traumatize you when you’re barely awake.
I wake up with tangled wires. The nurse is mad
because she got a call in the middle of the night.
I have to pee. My god how do I use the bathroom
with all these tubes connected to machines
with wires attached to my arms?
I call the nurse again. She’s not happy, again
She asks me my name. Today’s date.
I know what she’s doing. More lights blink and buzz,
more rolling sounds tighten around my arms.
I blink. The lights go out. It was all a bad dream.
April 4, 2023
I will not trivialize this condition
with a meme or a metaphor –
We tried that before and it fell flat –
It’s just a state of being
requiring new drugs and a different attitude.
There is no pain in this story,
just a too-frequent cough interrupting
my storytelling and swelling in my legs
that had a combined negative effect
in the long term.
There is also no sorrow in this story,
as it’s told. Its speed alone sealed off
many options for redress, but you should
know a slower telling opens up more grief.
The heathen raged, “Crucify him!” with
little cause, the scribes in their blue suits
marching to the uptown beat.
Wow! They really want him dead!
It frightened me but they don’t care.
The sorrow unwound made a song
I couldn’t sing, unused as I was
to the many sharps and flats
in the extended version. Compressed it was all
a percussive flash of sound
the skilled could make with ease.