Ins and Outs Part 3
Author's note: This is an epic length poem that will have to be split into parts and will be serialized in successive posts.
Part 3
our subject awoke
while still dark everywhere
dark with agony
an amputee's life
is not an easy one
bedsores the size of Antarctica
morphine by the quart
Musella asks
where you want her today kid
the kid can only volunteer
right in the humerus Muse
Musella aims her cupid's dart
at the stump of legend
as he talks dirty over
the roaring in his head
it's the intercom buzzing
somebody stop him
the Kid hugging those
intercontinental ballistic breasts
yells his head off
UNCONTRITE!
the monitor screens
have gone static
he is pulled through
his phosphorescent windshield
by Tex and his pony Mescaloosa
our kid searches the face
of his deliverer for a sign
his deliverer's facade alternately
smiles and frowns
in the manner of an ambivalent oracle
contemplate the causal
resultant of life muses Tex
instead I empty my stomach
looking for augury
and read my gurgling Rorschach
a message from children in bare feet
singing jump rope rhymes
unconcerned with desire as equations
shielded from the Wheel of Heaven
grinding the bones of sinners
by the wings of Mother Goose
who else?
break time this is a union town
sceno septimo
the Wheel of Heaven
sleep overcomes the ex-traveler
orderlies have spread germicide
in the dangerous places
quilted with sterile padding
mummified in steamy gauze
fresh from the autoclave
straight to NEURO WARD 4
intubated in cathetered out
curetted and pipetted
by Tex's one armed colleague
studio heads want a series
full channel scanograph
Dr. Rector of the award winning
Morphgenic Properties of
Infantile Retinal Hyperfunctionality
takes one look and says roll 'em
my insides glow from coast to coast
inside out for my public
as the meter needles reach red
the perceptive Dr. D. elocutes
just how healthy do you think you are
yours truly answers for the record books
for the nation
DON'T BUY THE DOUBLE LINE!
the meter needles hit purple,
Musella checks the tubing for clogs
blowing herself purple too
a front line trooper
we are all wounded
for anestheticians the question is
to emerge or not to emerge
must our young conclude
LIES ALL LIES
where did these many organs
and their silent churning come from
is the issue tissue rejection
or just plain rejection per se
two hands go for the buzzer
but get tangled in the tubing
arm tube nose tube mouth tube
chest tube piss tube
...To be continued
Copyright © Walter Alter | Year Posted 2017
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