Original Poetry about anything and everything.
The surgical blade
The drape that was laid
Upon skin built up for years.
Flat on your back
Ragged breath gone slack
Clamp down the mask
Begin the task.
The harm always starts
Before the healing can,
The cracking of ribs
The loss of blood.
If this is you
Going under the knife,
Remember some go a lifetime
With nobody seeing their heart,
For the struggling pump that it is
Trying to bale out a boat
Under constant downpour.
– Vagabond Prophet
Shaken awake by sun rays
Piercing curtains piercing dreams
As the balloon pops to remind me
Life is on its way.
Rushing without sirens
Some emergencies announce themselves
When your stomach enters the room
Before your tongue.
Now in the recycled air
Of the bloodless lair
Where the sterile everything
Instructed my body
How to be itself.
All the faces went blank
When the pushing yielded little
And the little one turned.
Drapes pulled up
So I couldn’t see
Them cut into me,
Poorly upholstered tragedy.
I heard no cry for my breast
I saw no quivering lip,
Now screaming in his stead
I grabbed the knife and threatened
Them to uphold the life
I’d so carefully procured.
Code white bled into pink
And tiny black blankets
Wheel away my dreams.
Thoughts of different futures
Feel like pulling out sutures
From the scar that I still bare.
– Vagabond Prophet
– I heard over the intercom system a code white in the OR, and then right afterwards a code pink in the OR. There are only so many procedures with a conscious patient. This is what my brain did to fill in the gaps of my knowledge.
Shipwrecked on a shore
Of feral condemnation
From every corner of the nation,
Combing every grain of sand
To find some remnant
Of your past life.
They think you’re unconscious
But you hear the whispers,
“Why are we bothering,
Can’t we let him slip
Through the cracks of our care?
Should we slip some
Intravenous fear to finish him off?”
I know not why you fill that bed
Or why your breach of protocol
Has the hallway outside
Filled with more armed guards
Then I can count on one hand.
The endlessness
Of your listlessness
And your breathlessness
That keeps draughting
Maskful after maskful
Of precious oxygen.
The threat of whip and lash
If you manage to leave
In cuffs rather than a bag.
There is value in sweat
And valour in tears,
Do you know these things?
Or only preyed upon that fact?
I don’t know
I can’t know.
I know that
The words tied to your name
Are not yet set in stone
Not carved into your bone.
The consequence
Of confidence
Is responsibility,
Is it a mantle
You’re prepared for?
Is this even your fault?
Are you one of those sad ones
Born with a convoluted tubule
Connecting ear to brain
Always twisting the truth,
Like a game of telephone
The message constantly misshapen.
Were lies only passed through your hands,
But licking all those envelopes
Your tongue stuck
To the roof of your mouth
Making truthful speech impossible?
Now having cried so many tears
The sea mistakes you
For part of itself
And heeds not your cries for help.
Though what they say could be true
That you released quivering bullets
From a quaking hand,
Don’t let the ticking of the clock
Be the author of your days.
Remember when good news
Wears camouflage
And bad news wears neon
That I’d still lend an ear.
After this one simple question,
If you could relive your life
Would you ruin it
In a brand new way?
These are questions we share
For ourselves, for our souls.
What else do we share?
Do we share a blood type?
Could your A+’s
Meet my O-’s
And make a different alphabet,
Where the words tied to your name
Don’t anchor you the same?
– Vagabond Prophet
Thank you so much @josy57 for prompting me with “The words tied to your name.”
More hospital related poetry for everybody, or as I like to call it…
Antiseptic verse
Enjoy.
I opened the letter as it arrived
Hoping it would buoy her spirits
And diminish the long shadows ahead
Only to find the screen displaying
A line flatter than a prairie.
The code blue was issued
And skilled men and women
Sprang into action
Making the bed springs squeak
Their emergency made plain.
I should be used to this by now,
Death is part of every life,
Irony is cruel sometimes,
Just like the irony of a body bag
That insists on sterile packaging.
As though the dead would complain
About the cleanliness of
Their final sleep.
The medicine we needed
Not found in this world,
Now here we are hoping
She can still find it somehow
The fountains of joy
And streams of love
No doctor can prescribe.
I am sorry but I must
Return this to sender
For the woman in my care
Has died this afternoon.
A letter from one heart
To another no longer beating.
– Vagabond Prophet
– Thanks @josy57 for the prompt “The medicine we need”
Vagabond Prophet 