[ Poet’s Note : Companion Poem to
attenuate: Aug 26 ]
her gracile cancer ridden body disturbed soul shores, re-assimilating into ether
simultaneously
embodied light attenuated as rain sleets soaked washing trauma embedded
molecules —
shattered dreams attenuated floorboards, oregons shivering sunlight through colourful veils
meanwhile
gracile human pendants attenuated threads of Leo’s mane, gently swaying in cool breeze
…
grey matter spilled into hot black and white hands
healing —
blue veins attenuated
their hair one corn, one wavy
lips grim thick and thin
clothed in hospital tunics
spaceship hovered silver sleek
cancer attenuated —
Weird,
lost in suburbia of grey concrete.
How did I come here in this tragic desolation?
I just lie down, face up. I cannot get up.
This is no place for me.
What need have I of this place? Where is this place?
Despair.....futility....distress….
No one in sight. No taxis, trams, vehicles,
closed shops, or signs of life.
Just where exactly am I?
Can I retrace my steps?
Like an opened tomb with the smell of stench,
It pervades everywhere as rubbish litters the streets.
There is no illumination at the end of the tunnel.
Am I dreaming? I pinch myself.
No, I'm awake
A door opens; paramedics lift me up.
An ambulance takes good care for me.
Slowly I gain my strength.
Four years old and short of breath,
in a tented bed at the end of the ward,
the terror of separation in check only
because Mother had told me she would be
there in the morning, first thing.
But she wasn't, and at last I just wailed
across the receding rows of sick children
and they, like sympathetic strings,
howled back in atonal harmonics.
The bulging matron shouted: "SHUT UP!",
and grumbled loudly about “that brat”.
Later, when Mother arrived,
the matron handed me a toy
with a smile,
that did not reach her eyes.
Unicorns and fairies and sprites galore, umbrage unto the night scorches again, they tirelessly whisper the haunted hospital marble is free of thistle! It is there to wait beside near and dear the princess couplet the princess cut stone fears, and turned down that measly jester the halls of the shamed are not this marbled vesper.
Horrible condition
Often lead to a visit
Somewhere we all have been
Perhaps when you jumped
Into a shallow pool from a hight
That was much to high or maybe
After a cold when you coughed your
Lungs up without stop
Regardless of the reason
Out of all that live we all have been sent
Off to the hospital where the staff present
Mastery of health to hopefully
Save your life
My soul had risen to God.
My coffee sat untouched,
Notifications left unchecked,
Words left unsaid.
It had been my time for days now.
The doctors kept saying
It was a shock I held on this long.
I felt my breath stop
Heard the constant beep
Of the heart monitor
Nurses and doctors rushed in,
searching for a pulse
that wasn't there
But the worst sound I heard
the one that nearly pulled me
back down to Earth
was my mother,
sobbing for what had been
her baby boy.
They put her in a hospital bed
Just for observation
She stayed much longer than they said
an estimate inflation.
Her muscles shrank, her bones got thin
Joints got bent, delirium.
We tried to stand her up, she fell
Is this what they call getting well?
The weaker she was, the harder to move
The less she moved, the sicker she proved
She got bed sores, more spinal pain
No rehab in house, Medicare's shame.
Lack of walking caused constipation
Then urinary blockage, more complication
Dehydration followed, so saline was applied
But the catheter had germs, so she got a UTI.
Her legs so still, she got a clot
A cluster of disasters, who lost the plot?
Not all countries do it this way
incentives in the U.S. contribute to decay.
Then we pay for months of rehab care
cheaper per day, once you are there
But in the big picture it makes more sense
To prevent deterioration, before its immense.
The above patient is a composite of many poor souls
Usually there are confounds, the argument has holes
However, it's true that this happens and can't always be reversed
Let's address the incentives first.
Dressed in an ill-fitting, hardly covering green garb
Surrounded by wan white-washed walls
Pricked and prodded like a pin-cushion
Wired to a beep-beeping machine
Drowsy in a drugged dreamland
Maddened by mind-whelming medications
Pressed by pain, feeling drained
Languishing on a hard hospital bed
Waiting for this prolonged ordeal to be over...
I’m a dusty grave,
Rust bones sighing heavily.
The windows--jail bars,
Display taunting glowing stars.
My heart tugs my veins like lead.
Everything is dark,
And silent--Besides my pulse.
Do they deserve me?
No--That’s why it's called free will!
I laugh, still--I cough--Lonely.
I only want them.
I only want ‘I love you.’
The river dams creak.
I can never fall asleep,
They’ve forgotten about me…
Sitting in a corner of a hospital,
Reading the weather of faces,
An invisible line divides the people:
One still holds a trace of courage,
Others’ eyes are filled with misery.
Moving toward the haunted silence of ICU
Of an illustrious military hospital,
Amid all the luxurious equipment,
There is a doomsday silence.
Somewhere, a dreadful sound is heard—
Pumping oxygen into an unconscious man;
Its sound—like a ticking clock,
Measuring the time left
Till the end of a world.
In the wards, too, a distinction lies:
Some eyes glitter with fragile hope,
Some, in despair and sickness, grow dim.
It is harsh to breathe
In that mourning environment.
Why are we born,
If the end is this cruel?
Miseries, atrocities, afflictions—
Even here, between breath and silence.
You meet lots of people up there,
The Mater Hospital,
Bobby told me.
Bobby is my friend,
His hospital companion said
As he , Alan,
Left before him, Bobby,
Returning home
I'll pray for you,
He said too,
A Christian,
Bobby
Reported,
You meet all kinds of people up there
And he meant of course,
Boys and girls,
Men and women,
Doctors and nurses,
But he meant also
Rangers fans,
And protestants,
And Alan
Was
One of them,
A Christian too, to boot.
And over time,
Weeks of illness,
They chatted Wendy
And
I ndiaiadh an omlan,
Became friends
Bobby is my friend,
Alan said,
And Bobby was pleased.
Bobby, you see Alan,
Prays for you too
Not in a
Kneel -down -and -pray -before -God
Kinda thing
He plays much better Alan
He tells people
How
You promised
To pray for him
That
Is Bobby's prayer
And
Its a fantastic way to pray,
Isn't it just.
Hospital's structure turned into dust,
Cracks, blood, chaos, memory's rust.
Children, parents, elderly helpless,
Patients gone and breathless.
Bomb blast consumed everything in its path,
The patients and doctors dead by world - wrecking wrath.
Tears that turned into ash, fire and blood,
No fire could be extinguished by a flood.
Bombs came in one after another,
No one had something to shield or cover.
Blood spills, eyes closing, tears from families,
Too many innocents turned casualties.
"No Fire Zone", papers stated,
Lives of tamils were bound to be fated.
Search of family members through smoke and tears,
This memory will never be forgotten for years.
A memory that hits us hard and unforgotten,
Families of the casualties had fears begotten.
2nd of May did not fade within time,
The bell cries as it does its last chime.
There’s potential for anything in the hospital.
Anyone could drift into a hospital gown.
Dawning on them at dawn, then again at noon.
They have enough hospital gowns for all of us and more.
And they all have a couple holes in them.
So do our stories which combine into one giant skeleton.
Got built by us over years,
We don’t know if he’s real or fake but looks a little paler than most types of bone.
Our stories may not always align.
But we chortle and pick at our wounds in front of the tv.
Pretend to be ghosts.
Under our beds, we roll over.
My eyes.
As my mouth almost moves, which in here?
Can’t do anything- harm, good, howling.
None.
In the hospital.
Things move like a slow motion swamp.
Guilt us.
I’ve been here three days.
As we interconnect like chalk lines around a body.
The hospital.
How can you call it that?
This is a plot of land in space and no time at all.
How can you call it that?
Just how…
How could I have planned to use it again when I remember finding it purely terrifying?
No practice on the pavement, immediate terror on the road.
How did I think I was going to get to my hospital placement on one of those scooters without needing the hospital myself?
It felt like I couldn’t stop if I needed to,
But I somehow got home after the simulation speech assessment
Where I was told I spoke too loudly,
Recommended to install a delayed auditory feedback app.
A busy hospital
They build beautiful hospitals as a statement
of those who believe in the medical profession's elitism
Having an operation here is an act of holiness
The whisper is that the surgeon was so and so
Now, back to reality, they give you surgery
send you to the hospital, where you are to stay until
You can count to ten and walk at least two steps
But no, after three days, they drive you home in
The hope is that relatives can look after you, disturbing
their day, a policy that causes many deaths
On TV, the famous surgeon gets a prize and
The patients operated on are a waste of his time
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