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6.

                                                   Miracles and Miseries

The world resolved itself back into focus
As I lay amid the swarm of monitors
Still gulping the sword that brought me breath.

The worst now past
Small miseries remained,
Chief among them the continuing mystery
Of my flooded, struggling lungs.

Finally I breathe well enough for the sword to be removed,
But the tests go on and on
The birth of each day bearing forth
Its own fresh indignity.

They give up guessing and haul me down again
To be opened anew and read for signs.

On the day this is done
The invisible agents of death outside
Decide to mock their pursuers
Leaving a tarot card at that day's shooting site.

They chose the Death card, of course
Revealing how little those 
Who choose to play God games really know
About the mystical.

Dreaming of omnipotence through dealing death
The unseen assassins miss their own meaning;
For this card signals change, the ending of present things.
They have unwittingly declared their game will soon be over,
Predicting their own demise.

Meanwhile the doctors make their own spread of me;
Come up blank again.

     Once more I return to I.C.U.,
     Held together with staples.

     Once more the little agonies ensue:
     The sitting, the turning, the testing.

By night they come for my blood.
By day they come for tests.
Always, in the background, the quiet moanings
Of we, the damned, condemned to medical Limbo
Roll on with the blind passage of hours, days.

     The English nurse comes, all brightness and bubble
     To heave my fragile self about;
     She's a welcome break in the monotony
     As my sustainers come and go.

Again the busy bedside conferences
Again the final admission
That all their probings have led down blind alleys.

A last-ditch effort is finally proposed:
Direct drainage of the drowning lungs.
To them this seems a grasping of straws,
But to me it seems the one sensible solution; 
I look forward to it eagerly.
My inner mantra of "This too shall pass"
Is wearing thin.

Like a Christian martyr of old,
They pierce my back with their lance, 
The sea within me 
Finds its way out.

As the noxious waters within rush out,
Air surges into my grateful lungs.
From this moment, recovery becomes the new reality.

As I recover,
Indiscretion leads to capture 
Of the unseen terrormakers.

To the astonishment of all, 
They prove to be a dignified looking black man
And his enthralled protege' -
No prior convictions, no history of trouble 
Attached to them at all.

This is how our modern Destroyers come calling.
Well dressed, well spoken models of propriety.
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