Beside Your Bedside

I woke at midnight, the digital clock like an electric rooster It doesn’t tick but I hear the seconds pass with emphasized thud, thud, thud, The kingdom of white, sterile, eunuchs wound by clockwork Into the storm upon the horizon, placed within a bone china teacup Drifting but safe from all unsavoury lesser gods or lesser men Nothing remotely stimulating or challenging beside the saline drip Thinking aloud but when the words fall out, almost just a mutter, a gust of air It’s a world of obsessive compulsives, a wave of disinfectant, when sat beside Your bland medical notes and records, the Holy Grail for overenthusiastic doctors One mistake and you’re like a smeared fly, wings concertinaed into liquid Your bones broken and oozing as some demigod’s thumb smears you out of history But it’s still a calming whitewash, bleaching away or just coating the self-neglect The machines, just how I’d imagine a clone’s manmade womb, an overcoat of wires Regardless of appearance, it’s a calm tsunami which hits me like a war hammer It’s a calming wave of silence and stumbled words when sat beside your bedside