Tag: hospital thoughts

Open Heart Surgery

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.

Sanguine


Hundreds of different bandages,

For hundreds of different wounds.

Some with silver, some with glue,

Some that cover most of you.

These ones in my hand

To contain maggots

While they eat

The dead flesh around a wound.

Insect like vultures

Subsisting off decay.

If blight should red or green or blue,

Antiseptic solutions for that too.

Every answer to every question

Understood by spinning blood

And squinting at urine.

What I’ve learnt from this place,

Sanguine in both definitions

Can be present in one body

That’s clinging to a bed

In a crowded hallway.

Medicine is a nice way of saying

A poison that we trust.

“This is going to hurt a little bit”

Means this will be torture.

That the suffering of those

That wail like feral beasts

Are beyond dignity

Looking only to survival.

“Decreasing quality of life” means that

This person isn’t worth many more dollars.

Mostly I’ve learned that hope

Is the ultimate trump card,

Hope covers all bad news,

Is a treatment for any diagnosis.

Peace can’t be prescribed

But can be spread by gentle hands

And kind words.

I only put gloves on a shelf,

Yet I now know the fingers

That will know them so well

Need my diligence

To impart some resilience.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting me with “What I have learned from you.” Hope this is okay.

Pulp

I’m wide asleep and dreaming

Of a future where the world’s not caving in.

Always presumptuous,

Always idealistic.

Today I saw convict wearing green

Shackles on both hands and feet

Those in chains

Still have pains.

In my optimistic stupor I imagine

His crime one that’s victimless.

Dark hair and dark eyes

He had with dark remarks

For the guards at either arm.

I too have a hamartia

A kryptonite, Achilles heel.

Yet surely the stories not yet finished

Are the ones most in need

Of divine intervention.

I’ve been incorrigible

And the man in green may be too,

Yet I hope that on our piles of kindling

Similarly damp

That when a spark does catch

Our hearts can some salvation snatch.

That’s not presumptuous

That’s not idealistic,

I’m crushed by the weight of a savior,

And from pulp comes hopeful seeds.

– Vagabond Prophet

Thanks @josy57 for prompting @mildreflections and myself with “A presumptuous dream.” Hope this wasn’t wasted on the likes of me.

Minstrel

Days in a row now

You’ve got your stool in the foyer,

Gnarled fingernails

Classical guitar.

Strumming and plucking,

Most beautifully

Did somebody hire you?

Or did you just see a need?

For those with cancer

You play in C minor,

Important work you’re doing.

You minstrel of meningitis,

Troubadour of tuberculosis

Don’t give up we need you so.

– Vagabond Prophet

Chin Whiskers

White hair and pale eyes to match,

Deep lines in your loose skin

Marking many winters of the body

And many more of the heart.

Mam can I ask about your chin whiskers?

Were you of such a beauty in youth

That in age it requires new roads to travel?

Now that you’re eyes are unclear

And your legs unsteady,

Majesty comes pouring off your face

Now that your words make no sense.

Don’t worry mam I understand now,

You were somebody’s queen

In a kingdom long fallen.

– Vagabond Prophet

Colour Wheel

Blood in different hues

Red’s coming from blues

Deep scarlets

And shallow crimsons.

Life stories in different shades,

Humour like strawberries,

Regret like beets,

Pride bright as the robins chest.

Dozens of you lying there

Blood pulsing through those tubes,

A colour wheel crafted by disease.

– Vagabond Prophet

Hospital story of the day: overhearing a doctor on the phone “Hi I’m trying to track down a liver biopsy…” How do you lose a piece of a liver? Where did it go, who took it, was it never taken from the patient? Is there somebody who stole a chunk of liver, is there somebody who has a fully intact liver who needs a chunk taken out. All questions that will keep me up tonight. If you’re out there tonight also wondering what happened to your liver biopsy PM me and I’ll let you know how you can contact the dumbass who lost it.

Vagabond Prophet

Ice Machine


He’d painstakingly inched along

From his room, in a wheelchair

So slowly that with each rotation

The world made a rotation on its axis,

He made glaciers look swift.

He was so very old

That time had made knots in his mind,

And knit wrinkles in his spine.

He sat in front

Of that silver machine

And asked me

“How do I get ice out of here?”

Honesty is the best policy,

Or so I’ve been told

So I plainly told him,

“Sir, that’s a blanket warmer.”

– Vagabond Prophet