Delirium

Delirium

The wound ward crow arrives

As sour as bacteria

As alarming as amputation

This is serious, she says

I am serious, she says

Tainting the air with toxic tremors

Listening to the distant shores of pain

Dazzling sensation comes back

Shivering cold and sharp

And the rock cod go

La la la la lalala

I have measured out my life in dixie cups

Of medication

Do not ask a question

The answer is

Up in the air

It is time to admit

I am not well

There’s an old man in a wheel chair

Waiting to be admitted

His body dry and thin

His arms long to scuttle

Like an old dried out spider

He gestures desperately

To move air into his lungs

He cannot fill his lungs

His wife is bored by everything

And the nurses come and go

Whispering about vital signs

You know

Sh sh sh sh shshshsh

The nurse comes to me

And I say, that man can’t breathe

He looks at me through wonky glasses

His blue eyes searching

He leans in the chair and pulls air

Toward his chest; at last someone understands

The porter comes and says Let’s go!

And pushes the old man down the empty hallway

To the oxygen tanks

I have been tumbled down those hallways before

And know them for the bacteria lurking

Around corners

Porters spinning down hallways

Around corners and through doors

to surgeons sawing across bones

One more swing of the saw

The blade a high-pitched scraping

The dust flies around in a mist

I am the patient drugged upon the table

The gauze is woven round and round

And the rock cod sing la la la la lalala

On the floor the patient’s snore

and hack the night with dry rattling breaths

Everyone is high on hydro morphine

I have measured out my life in dixie cups

Of medication

As the light quickens

Over the mountains

In a new day beginning

The poison seeps through the bandages

Wound round and around the wound

Where will the poison end

Where will it be content

To settle

Start the intravenous

On the floor the nurses come and go

Who’s coming down the hallway now?

Whisper whisper whisper

A daughter, a mother

I know these songs from before

I know them from before

It was the nurse who said sh sh sh sh shshsh

We are private

We have a secret

Down in the dungeon

Around the corner

Give her the ether

That is not what was said at all

That is not what was said

The smooth-talking preacher was wheeled in last night

A devil, or very close - in disguise

High on drugs - some from the hospital

Let us pray to the heavenly father

As he lies to the nurses

And phones the police

Fire alarms go off

Clang clang clang

The fight with the devil

continues through the night

As the poison pulses through

Yea though I walk

Insidious seeping incessant beeping

And the rock cod go la la la la lalala