Passing Out

 The doctor fingers my bruise.
 
"Magnificent," he says, "black 
at the edges and purple 
cored.
" Seated, he spies for clues, 
gingerly probing the slack 
flesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull 

for air, losing the battle.
 
Faced by his aged diploma, 
the heavy head of the X- 
ray, and the iron saddle, 
I grow lonely.
 He finds my 
secrets common and my sex 

neither objectionable 
nor lovely, though he is on 
the hunt for significance.
 
The shelved cutlery twinkles 
behind glass, and I am on 
the way out, "an instance 

of the succumbed through extreme 
fantasy.
" He is alarmed 
at last, and would raise me, but 
I am floorward in a dream 
of lowered trousers, unarmed 
and weakly fighting to shut 

the window of my drawers.
 
There are others in the room, 
voices of women above 
white oxfords; and the old floor, 
the friendly linoleum, 
departs.
 I whisper, "my love," 

and am safe, tabled, sniffing 
spirits of ammonia 
in the land of my fellows.
 
"Open house!" my openings 
sing: pores, nose, anus let go 
their charges, a shameless flow 

into the outer world; 
and the ceiling, equipped with 
intelligence, surveys my 
produce.
 The doctor is thrilled 
by my display, for he is half 
the slave of necessity; 

I, enormous in my need, 
justify his sciences.
 
"We have alternatives," he 
says, "Removal.
.
.
" (And my blood 
whitens as on their dull trays 
the tubes dance.
 I must study 

the dark bellows of the gas 
machine, the painless maker.
) 
".
.
.
and learning to live with it.
" 
Oh, but I am learning fast 
to live with any pain, ache, 
growth to keep myself intact; 

and in imagination 
I hug my bruise like an old 
Pooh Bear, already attuned 
to its moods.
 "Oh, my dark one, 
tell of the coming of cold 
and of Kings, ancient and ruined.
"

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...