I had a nightmare one night
Of a disease I couldn't fight
Laying in a bed in the ER
Doc's were puzzled; my case was bizarre.
I ended up with a hospital stay
Laying on my back, most of the day
Muscles eroding from disuse
All they would give me was apple juice.
Doctors tried hard, nurses nice too
In general tried to help, a caring crew.
Then I heard a nasty laugh somewhere near
I'd heard that laugh before, I was filled with fear.
Just a bad apple, one bad employee
Could give the wrong meds, to make a mess of me
Still in the dream I wished I never came
Grabbed my light saber, turned on the flame.
The force was with me, so I jumped out of bed,
In a dream you can transition from almost dead
I raced down the hall, IV tube came loose
Flew out the window, escaped the revenge noose.
I folded white wings, landed on a hill
Feeling young again, all by power of will
Then I woke up, I was in a nursing home
A year immobile, a year alone.
That was a dream too, two levels to escape
Pretended I was a marathoner, that got me awake.
But it raises a question, society needs trust
Just one bad apple, and it could be dust to dust.
Say it while you're here. Say it while you're here!
How high they build hospitals!
Towering, chemically distilled alters
that the dead worship away from.
Piling, corpses on corpses on
tumors, on hearses.
Coffins for sale! Coffins for sale!
How lovely they make the mortuary
bells toll! Resonant frequencies that
the living stumble into. Onto, around.
How deeply the gravediggers dig!
Shovel, on glass, on cement, on
brick. Crack! What a hideous sound!
How high the fragments soar! Look
at them go.
How low they go, for such low blows
Insurance cards, rip! Hospital beds. Tip!
There go the patients down the trash chute!
Head first, feet first… drained of blood.
How intelligent the thoughts of mad men be.
Label them! Banish them! Don't let them speak!
It's so easy to dismiss someone when they're
called derogatory things. How hypocrisy weighs
down the silver of their tongues!
How loud! How loud? Too loud.
How long you wait How long you smile
How long you are here doesn't matter to
any of them, any one. But it matters to me.
It matters to me dearly, my love.
We settled in for the long flight home,
the loud noise got our attention.
Dinner was served with a smile,
then the captain came on.
We blew out our tires on take off,
now for an emergency landing.
One Brief Unforgettable Moment.
Everything leads up to this
adds up to this position
where you think you'll be alone
forever but fairly soon if not exactly
next week you will meet someone
in a park or stuck in traffic
They will set your flesh alight
slowly much too slowly and it
will seem like bad behaviour
you will feel as if
as if you are harbouring an infection
You will be together for five years and six months
through violent happiness and time zones
and locations such as
hospitals and mountains
After which you will think you are recovered
having acquired a liquid grace and social ease
friends will say
you seem younger less precious
Now take this pill you must forget
this will ever happen
Time marches on but the story doesn't change.
Innocent lives being taken by a person whose deranged..
Last weekend in Pa. it was our state police, one is still
critical, and the other is now deceased..
The unstable shooter is also now gone.
Will this ever stop? What keeps going so wrong?
This tragic story truly rings home for me.
I had a person with mental health struggles in my family.
Psychiatrists rely on the pharmaceutical industry and
prescribe new medications that alter patients' brain chemistry.
Family members are often leery to commit, because our mental
hospitals discharge the patient still unfit, and they are left to
deal with the brunt of it.
At home, these families struggle to keep things in control.
Many times that stress alone will take a major toll.
How many more peacekeepers?
How many more innocent lives is our society willing to sacrifice?
Hospitals are designed
(a) to make you appreciate your bed at home
(b) to prompt many unanswerable questions
(c) to facilitate smooth patient care
(d) to never complain about your wife’s cooking again
Referrals to a psychiatrist are made when
(a) you become catatonic after having no sleep for a week
(b) after complaining about a noisy roommate you start convulsing with frustration
(c) you ask the nurse for a sleeping aid and she brings
warm milk
(d) You are all set for discharge but the Dr is delayed in surgery all day
Reflecting on a hospital stay makes you
(a) wonder how you survived the long nights
(b) vow never to eat chicken broth again
(c) appreciate there are no drafts behind when you get up for a walk
(d) note how quiet the house really is
JELLO
I hate jello because it is a food
once in your mouth it wiggles moves
reminds me of what worms must feel like to eat
grosses me out for the life of me
Who had such a fantasy
to make some squishy protein
From animal parts most disgusting
Food served in hospitals observably
Jellied cranberries a similar food
Would rather have cranberry juice
And souse meat looks like it is raw
It is jellied for bellies after all
Now if jello had a super power
like curing disease or growing flower
I still could not keep it down
Jello is gross even with fruit I’ve found.
What really makes patients gasp for air?
How far blaming poor oxygen’s fair?
Go right unto root’s core
And a ship comes to shore:
Hospital bills do have giant’s share.
Still deeper should ye pore,
Bleeding cause comes to fore:
Dearth of hope and death-wish of despair!
______________________________________
Happenings |21.05.2021|
Poet’s note:
One might feel that a limerick form for a subject matter so serious like this is not quite appropriate. Maybe, but I feel: one should not under-estimate the reach of limericks, extended as this one is or not.
It is a moot question, how much our hospitals and hospices, especially private, care to do all that would sustain patients’ hope, and less said about their bills the better. In the absence of the lifeline of hope, the death-wish of despair sets in.
These walls, crumbling through time.
seeing old metal beds, stained mattresses,
broken sinks and toilets, rusted old medical supplies and a vacant morgue.
I'm walking through a dark place where pain was inflicted,
on patients to non existing ailments.
Lobotomies, electroshock, meds that these doctors and nurses,
thought would cure such simple illnesses.
The flickering florescent lights above my head.
showing me graffiti on the surface,
seeing a place from the past runs,
chills down my spine.
Thinking of the people who felt lost,
hurt, and neglected.
How they were mistreated or discarded.
To still hear the moans and groans echo through the halls.
The suicides', the padded rooms and the unmarked graves,
bring sorrow to my heart.
Those past years of being treated as nothing but as test dummies.
Those old stories of the survivors as they remember their time here.
As if they lived through the pain just yesterday.
Now the hospitals lay empty.
As the ghosts of victims still haunt these halls.
I will visit them one day and explore through these deserted rooms.
Since that shutdown thing
Things have been quite quiet here at work
Im a porter in a hospital
Moving people for transport and some other things now
My hospital has stayed the same,
But everyone is looking like surgeons and dentists,
Ive read the governments writing,
We mustn't do this; we must do that,
Fair enough,
They probably know their stuff
The COBRA meetings probably sort it all out
With them plonked in the under-Westminster bunker
People are going rather do-lally
Wearing gas-masks, NBC suits and more
All we read at the hospital is grey and different from the other
The shops MAY open; the schools WILL close
The staff are doing their bit - not so much at this hospital
We help people who cant walk and move
I do wish the papers would stop
We might as well give up if we take all that seriously...
I have lots of relatives
in Mental
Hospitals
who I do not
Go Visit
For Obvious
Reasons.
hospitals must help
all who need medical care--
insurance or not
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