Best Scalpels Poems
Intravenous therapy,
She's watching over me.
Grasping my hand,
She whispers, "please dear, count to ten."
Six... piercing paralysis,
Her hand cold as the air.
She lets go, leaving me there.
Alone, squirming, for just one prayer.
Yelling, and screaming.
Kicking, twisting, and questioning.
Nothing happens, its all in my head.
Frozen, welded to my metal death bed.
Minutes and hours tick away,
Slow, painful psychological decay.
I try to think of hating her,
But those thoughts just blur,
her pretty face.
Then I realize why I'm actually here.
Amidst the psychotic silence,
she walks in, and smiles.
She says, "Darling, this won't take a while."
Okay I say, dismissing the horror of the situation.
Her angelic voice, sedating all sensations.
I see the scalpels, forceps,
retractors, and clamps.
Completely trusting, blinded by the hanging lamp.
It won't hurt, so doctor please just cut.
Bloody plasmic mess,
Pressure to suppress,
Wide open arteries, surgical misery.
No anesthetics. Painless, no distress.
She carves a circle in my chest.
I don't contest, just attest.
Let her carve into me, at my own request.
Just promise, no cardiac arrest.
She pulls out my heart.
Leaving my entire chest hollow.
No more emotions,
the hardest pill to swallow.
But it is why I'm here.
No reason to fear.
Doctor, all I ask is you don't hurt it anymore.
You do what you want with it, it's completely yours.
Now I'm heartless, and only function with my brain.
Emotionless logic was the only way to sustain.
My future seems brighter,
All my loves spent, cut from the source.
I feel so much lighter, of course.
It was the heart.
Thank you doctor, for pulling me apart,
making me feel so alive.
The love, the emotions, the surgery,
my new will to survive.
Thats when she said,
"Darling, it's all in your head. You've been dead since we first met."
Kill the Silent One
(Silent Killer)
He has invaded, unseen
Lurking and silent
Evil destroying one and all
From cell to cell
Crawling underneath
Leaching blood and soul
Smiles are murdered
Futures destroyed
Families ruined
The silent one is a killer
Who must be killed
The order has been given
Command centre now on full alert
Maps perused and studied
Strategies contemplated
The invasion...........
Will be at early dawn
Men prepare their battle gear
The landing party both excited and nervous
Life depends on them
Ones death also looms
They have no guilt
No fear
For whom shall be killed
The silent one's days are numbered
Victory is their only option and concern
War has been declared
And
We shall overcome
The silent one
The dawn is approaching
The men kit up in their uniforms
Preparing equipment, double checking their instruments
They march forth ready to do to battle
At dawn, as the brightness above shines down upon them
They enter the theater of operations
Weapons ready
Doctors in full dress
Scrub nurses ready for action
Technicians monitoring vital signs
The battle has begun
More saline, clamps, increase IV, Scalpels
Blood stains the heroes of the moment
The end, a silence, a satisfaction, a tear
This patient can be declared
Cancer free
The silent one was murdered
Cancer removed
Life restored
Family rejoices
Tears and kisses
This battle won
This is a parody on Gee Officer Krupke from West Side Story .
Dear Doctor Grumpee
Nobody knows
Why I'm hooked on this site
Writing poetry and prose .
I write sonnet and haiku
Short tanka and monoku
Golly gee , to me it's poetry flu .
Gee Doctor Grumpee , I'm spewing' out words
I know it sounds crazy and really absurd
I ain't no Shakespeare
Don't misunderstand
This weird word-flow ain't planned .
It ain't planned ; It ain't planned
It ain't planned ; It ain't planned
No.. It ain't planned .
NURSE ICEMAN ; " His symptoms are so gory ".
SISTER AKSHUN ;" Lemme tell it to the ward " .
NURSE ICEMAN ; " No! Tell it to the Surgeon " .
Dear Surgeon Flick-Knife
My words simply flowed
Epigram , quatrain
Tetractys and ode
Elegy ballade
Nonet and rhyme
Suffering scalpels ! , now I'm feeling fine .
I try not to think about it, my friend.
It's so horrible, and yet,
I'm on beer ten, and I won't see you again -
So, I'll tell you a secret.
No, it's not what happened in Vietnam.
I still see it in stop-action -
If you measured it in inches and seconds,
That moment was a fraction.
A youth soccer game, my dad in the crowd,
It was nineteen sixty-two
When we lost the championship game
As I let the winning goal go through.
As a boy, I never hurt anyone,
Was a friend when needed.
I always helped my mother with her chores.
Mom and Dad, I heeded.
I studied hard, did all my homework,
Followed every rule.
Upon college graduation, I was rewarded,
Accepted to med school.
Today, I am a successful surgeon
Using scalpels and knives.
I make so many people feel better -
Sometimes, I even save lives.
Yet, deep down, I don't have what it takes.
I let everybody down.
What you see before you is a failure.
I should be buried in the ground.
I see it as we speak. My dad was in the crowd.
It was nineteen sixty-two.
We lost the championship game.
I let the winning goal go through.
You see, there's nothing now that I can do -
But wait, I have a little son.
He plays goalie on his youth soccer team,
A great boy who likes to have fun.
When the rival striker takes his final shot,
There's one thing my son won't do.
Well, I hope he doesn't, no, he better not,
Let the winning goal go through.
Day 1
I fall—not through space
something thinner—
like light stretched
too far
across the skin of a thought
I buried years ago
The tunnel hums
with memory—
a child’s scream rising into laughter,
the sting of ozone before the storm
the flicker between blinks
where everything vanishes
Darkness
Sun blinds—
Day 2
The sky is a calm equation—
no clouds, no noise,
just light folded neatly
like fresh hospital sheets
The grass soft as breath.
No bugs. No bruises.
Everyone wears a gentle smile
like they’re born with softness
“Hello, Alice.”
They say it like a blessing.
They say it like I belong.
The air is perfectly
warm, like an infant’s cradle
Day 7
They say God
carved this world out with scalpels
—not one corner flawed
Every turn I’m greeted with
a warm, prepared smile,
“Hello, Alice.”
Nothing bleeds.
Knives are ornaments.
They assume I was born
with the scars on my wrist.
Even sorrow comes in silk-lined boxes,
labeled, packed,
ready to ship away
I tried to cry
The air wiped the tears dry
The silence tastes sweet here
and I cringe at the taste of sugar
Day 18
I tore up the garden today.
The tulips giggled
as I snapped their necks.
No dirt beneath—just
velvet lining.
I screamed into my reflection
in the lake with no ripples.
She smiled back
lips curled at a planned angle
I wandered around the city
grabbing strangers by the wrists
I want to shake their smile off their faces—
What hurts here? I ask
They blink:
What’s that?
Day 19
A couple invited me to dinner.
Ray and Jay.
They’ve never fought.
They finish each other’s sentences
like synchronized clocks.
They agree
on the color of the sheets,
the taste of strawberries,
how long to hold eye contact.
I watched them toast to peace.
I wanted to scream
just to see if they’d flinch—
I don’t know how much more I can take.
Day ??
I stepped off the roof
Not for death, no—
i just want a crack in the lined tiles
hair unravelled by wild wind
a cut that stings before it heals
But the air caught me,
soft as a baby’s first blanket
I landed on a bed of
roses with no thrones
Ray helped me up
while Jay offered me apple tea
“Hello, Alice,” they said
“Welcome back to the dream.”
moribund she wondered what
the postmortem would leave
other than a dead body and wounds
made by the many scalpels of life
operations gone wrong and stitch-ups
with sutures festering at the seams
as a mere mortal she had not chosen
the coffin head stone and grave
as one should not mess with writings
on the wall of reputation and fame
a quick eulogy and lies about her being
heavily edited script and funeral banquet
roses near the pit how she hated the thorns
would have preferred a blackberry hedge
dandelion and nettles for butterflies to feed
a cardboard box instead of marble and wood
for a worm feast of mortal impermanence
better to close the shutters than holding on
to a story she had narrated in full view of
short lived longevity in transit of past merit
and yet she lived on in memories and
the grace that she deserved for always
sticking to the belief and sturdy conviction
embraced by compassion and kindness
captured in a hole in the grounds of demise
entangled in truths conjecture and refutation
she watched on as they just would not let go
of remembrance and the dance of the dead
until they read a poem she had written
as she shuddered at the misplaced apostrophe
‘live and let; die as you please’
26th July 2021
Rare, natural, unblemished, lasting and profound
Beauty is penned, defined and crooned
From poets, authors, artist and strangers
Described in depth, penned to death,
Setting standards unreachable by the masses.
Products slathered, potions swallowed, scalpels wielded
Suctioned and enhanced to have a chance
In a world so small minded and superficial
Seeking an approved, natural look
From the very masses that sit in self help classes.
Time creeps up, with gravities silent pull
Stripping the unnatural lifts, tucks and additions
Gone are the showpieces, the odes of the poet
Forgotten by the masses attending their classes
Artificial beauty, behind walls free of mirrored glasses.
One man
Stands
Beneath his white helmet
And demands,
Silence.
Throughout Aleppo.
His stethoscope,
He attaches
To the dust
And listens
From his knees.
The man has
Ten fingers,
A dry brush
And a pair of pliers
To dig like an archeologist.
He does not have years,
But minutes
To search the ruins
For toes
That wiggle
Or mouths
That suckle
Or bleeding hearts
That still beat
Like tremors
In puddles of plaster.
When an apartment building
Of ten stories
Is bombed
By planes
Flown by strangers
And its hallways and closets
And bedrooms
And kitchens
And stairwells
Are pancaked
Into a single floor
Of wreckage
In seconds,
There can be tiny
Zigzagged
Crevices
With, but inches of space
And pockets of air
Left
Where
Former residents
May fill these places
With their slippery bodies
Poured like liquid
Into molds
That harden
While they wait
For a miraculous tap
From Above
Or Below
Or from the Sideways.
Sometimes,
The plaster and gravel
Molds
Blink
Back
With the brown eyes
Of a three year old
Or the trickle of blood
Can faintly be heard
Still flowing
Under
A mother’s skin
In
And through her veins.
To the rubble surgeon,
That is like seeing fireworks
Or hearing tubas,
So, he probes further.
Using his fingernails
Like scalpels,
He unearths
An elbow,
A shoulder,
A chest,
The belly,
Ankle bones
And then, the whole
Of the lightning-shaped body
Releases in one dusty swoop,
Scooped
Into both his hands
And raised above his head
As if on scales
And lifted to the emerald sky,
The weight of the world
Presented to the gods,
A broken body
And a scarred soul
But, yes,
Yes,
Pried
Alive
With the first cry of a second birth
From a saved person
Who’s
On
No one’s side
But for God's.
at last he knows what
has been kicking his ass all these years
living a slow trauma smelling of empire
guardians of civilization on strike or asleep
concluding that non-conformists are all alike
but wait I am harsh this is all from memory
must have been the Kristalnacht last night
the simple concept fire is hot
does not have a subjective alternative
I tell you this with both lips
eyes watering from the smoke and prayers
in an instructive grand demonstration
of just the right amount
at just the right time
fortunately the farm subsidies
kept his garden of delight
in full Amsterdam trim
until Dr. Schnitt opened his skull
in a state sanctioned inquiry
involving all manner of pageantry
gave me a jolly good boot up the spizzerinctum
I'll tell you that right here right there
tweetering bluebirds now circle my head
the hum of life in there somewhere
most thoughts are unoriginal anyhow
you don't need a text balloon to survive
but it's a lot more contemporary
makes the aerodynamics a little smoother
my geneticist says I must be careful
several members of my family
have perished from documented cases
of spontaneous human combustion
must have fallen off the chameleon ride
but no matter they love you one day
hate your ashes the next go figure
not all internal signal input is valid
for this reason scalpels have been handed out
a National Dissection Day special
Nurse Lefty in her lightning bug suit
was just trying to get the job done
after the renunciation of befuddlement
and the realization she had fingers
that were much different from her toes
oh boy we're on another subject already
rhyming crocodile and Nile somehow
fighting fire with smoke see above
partially eaten in spite of the effort
even the effort was eaten
cough cough
From "Engine of Didactic Beauty" available on Amazon
Artist Portfolio: http://walteralter.byethost32.com/
What does it matter to me?
If plastic clogs the roaring seas.
All I want is convenience,
A life of ease.
Do you think I give a damn?
If they poison our wells.
And chainsaw scalpels,
Erases nature's tender hand.
I'm busy!
To busy silver plating my existence,
To worry about fallen trees
And dust bowl graveyards .
Where man's innocence comes to die.
Oh I will shed crocodile tears,
And reassure you everything will be fine.
It's good for business,
even better for the bottom line.
Minding your own business,
In the sea.
Along came a ship,
To kill me.
They’ve chased my father and my mum,
They’ve killed my grandparents,
And their son.
These little people,
Who carry a gun.
Are totally committed to killing my son.
They don’t seem to fear,
Or care.
No matter how fast I Run,
I can’t get away from that gun.
I should go lower into the sea,
2 miles deep ,out of their reach..
But I don’t Dive Dive Dive,
I’m not a sub, in the sea,
I’m an animal life and should be left be.
I don’t have missles upon my back,
Or torpedos , to shoot back.
I can’t defend and I can’t attack,
I don’t even want to fight back.
I may as well wait here, to get shot in the head.
And my flesh stripped, from my body in strips.
I don’t know why I have to die,
My son and my, sister and my mum, all died under this same gun.
In to breach goes a round now just darkness and no sound.
Now I’m on their ship,
Knives and scalpels take me to bits.
Now theres nothing left of me
Just this poem I leave for thee.
I get this job every year
I have never been to medical school and I am just a lowly nurse
Yet it seems that every year my family hands me the electric scalpels and puts me to work
I surgically slice and dice ole Turkey Lurkey
Once he comes out of the oven he begins to get that nervous look upon his face
"I wonder how she will approach me this year?
Will it be the prone presentation or supine?
One year we ordered Cornish hens and it was sublime!
No carving required!"
This year I have a new blade and it is revved up and rearing to go
First I delicately removed his thighs and cut perpendicular through his breast
His gizzards were harvested at the beginning of the surgery all neatly tucked away in a nice little baggy
After Turkey Lurkey’s flesh was neatly arranged on the tray
I took the remaining juices and basted him one more time
Lean and tender and just on time
He arrived to the table straight from the O.R.
Happy Thanksgiving from my surgical suite to yours!
Sincerely,
The Turkey Surgeon,
Gwendolen Rix
This is my official Thanksgiving Day poem!
11-27-14
We came here pretentious, egoistic, hyper-inflated with our meager academic laurels and
filled with self-adulation of our GPAs
You saw us plainly; our minds almost blank like a tabular rasa, but you saw potential and
so gently humbled us with IAs
Under the aegis of your golden rules, we learnt to know when to be silent and when to
“Always say something”
We needed to know the anatomy of this new education in order to rectify the pathologies of
our time
With your fatherly scalpels, you dissected the courses into absorbable pieces
You nurtured us and gave us a rather microscopic view of life so we can appreciate the
people around us
Even when the rigors of the academics struck us dumb, you were there to repolarise our
neurons with your fraternal voice; “Think folks!”
When complacency and indolence set in, you shook us up in a booming tone “It’s your job to
know!” and whet our hunger for knowledge
You gave us faith and pushed us to our limits till we saw distinctions right ahead of us
When we were almost tired and the world saw us hyperventilating and palpitating with fear
of referrals,
You transfused us with more knowledge, healed us and saved us at the phase of irreversible
shock and resuscitated us to be the best we could be
When we were back on our feet and had something to offer, you stood by, reminding us never
to judge others especially our patients
But to strive to put a smile on the faces of others
As if that were not enough, your chemoprophylaxis for us was holistic enough
To instill in our hearts a strong sense of selflessness with high doses of patriotism
running through our veins
Indeed your love for us is broad spectrum.
Today our hearts are filled with utmost gratitude
For you have placed us at an academic altitude
So we can have something to offer our generation
Our lips will continue in ceaseless veneration
At your polymorphic roles in our lives
For you are our teachers, our parents and our role models
We may twist and turn the queen’s language in your praise
We may shower gifts and awards
We may mimic your voices and behave like you
All we want to say is “We deeply love you, our dear lecturers.”
Word Painting In Black and White
Cubed ice dismantling the plank bridge with pliers
made of syrup spilled with a dash of grief and brawn
the reptilian doughboy mixes up another cosmic batch
of truth cookies designed to mislead with wishes of
the big power grab all manifesting inside the largest
television set ever devised with a flat screen as big as
a flying saucer that has at last come down to earth
so large and compelling my eyes were sucked out of
my sockets for five seconds of blind purgatory something
I thought of as an impossibility what with the moon landings
in the last century and all the heart transplants with
a dozen doctors dedicating a day of grueling hours with
silver forceps and scalpels designed to cut and close
as with all relationships between a tight skirt and a mustache
on the floor by a black vent kissing with fingers touching and
moans muffled by the hand of fear there on the green carpet
in a mad darkness by the black vent and the trees with lemons
invading from days and decades earlier when young women
found the tile smooth and electric with sharp tingling sensations
on naked nubile skin rubbed down with cold creams made of fish
ransacking a thousand anchored ships with knives made of pearl by
old pipe-smoking hippies who make love all day with sprawling girls
looking for hot thrills inside gardens made of stone and bootleg love.
Birthday Wishes: Horatian Ode
Sweet sixteen with no happy birthday cake.
Oh, Mother, you're missed but I am bitter.
How many hundreds did your calloused hands make?
So steady, so sure, why do they quiver?
A Mother who has no thought for herself,
A daughter too immature to think to help.
A lovely, womanly form, but only Momma to me..
Oh Momma, she has your eyes so you can watch over me.
Abducted suddenly from youth, captive in haggardly age,
Your battle with scalpels left their jagged marks…
Just as your ancestral Natives wore paint when war raged,
It was your way to push back at the dark.
If time were a river, I'd gladly jump right in…
To dark, freezing waters, no matter, I'd swim…
To try to give back a portion of your goodness and light,
Stand with my back to yours and together we'd fight.