Ins and Outs Part 4
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
Dr. D. confers in panic
with Rex and boys at the Limbo Saloon
by now my eyes are ping pong balls
the final recommendation is for
ritual abandonment
Fra Umbilicus answers his page
in the monastery wing
and servos his motorchair up to my railing
intones the curse of the catacombs
think of it as original my sin er son
how the flat line fooled the experts
was on the 6 o'clock
perhaps it was the fact
that it went vertical
tripping alarm buzz circuits
from Hell to breakfast
like a reeking retching lurching
Nietschean Lazarus
a scarred and demented Universe
gave birth to itself
and the combined riotous
and cheering populations
of BURN WARD 3
and AMPUTATION WARD 2
and NARCOLEPSY WARD 666
cameras pick up deicide in the stairwell
a theomachian commotion
clangity-whaaang go the
oxygen tanks bouncing four flights
plopity-smash go
the out/intravenous bottles
whackety-crack
goes his portable Respiropump
screechety-eech
goes NEURO WARD's $90,000 Lobotoscan
cascading sympathetically
8er from Decatur
straining against the tube works
and their attached impedimenta
beneath the basement corridor steam pipes
awakening autopsy cadavers
with every labored pitch and yaw
bursting through the fire exit
on the firing squad's day off
out onto St. Hilarity's loading dock
he turns and waves howdy-ose amigoes
to the gathered throngs
Musela, Tex, the Santa Guadalupe Mariachis
slams Lucille the ambulance's door
severing all connections
arm tube nose tube mouth tube
chest tube piss tube
hits the throttle light bar and siren
and lets Lucille's squealing wheels
burn rubber clear down
to the land of rubber plantations
until the tank hits empty
and memory returns syllables
and lost parts of speech
the twin t's of utterance two swords
and fate the swindler of souls
has a blowout
at 90 at 5...at 15...
the separated twins
separate the H-O-R-I-Z-O-N
into before and after
rhyming less on the outside
than on the inside out
a vacation follows
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
http://tinyurl.com/nhfk6dr
Copyright © Walter Alter | Year Posted 2017
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