Poetry for the Masses

"Who Said Hospitals Are For the Dying"

Hospitals are fortresses of solitude
Where you barricade the sick or nearly dying
A quarantined few, a stone-walled arcade
Of access-denied requests for peaceful sleep

We are all dressed up in the formal attire
Our attendance has been requested to a lacquered party
Planned with the same precision
Taken by the surgeon in his impenetrable mask and gloves

The sounds imitable of a monitor
Just off the screen
Runs the consistency of your ability to breathe
Deeply, breathe shallow
Or maybe your weak heart's ability to beat
Cast in stone, set the bone
I'm here by your bedside
When you deem it the right time to cry
I will watch you die

For love means watching someone you know die
A true man doesn't hide
Behind the cage of the bathroom door
Until all pain is relieved
In the catheter placed at your feet
Head in hands
Praying for a simple act of charity
Like, albeit, defeat

My body is the cage
That will set love free
When the time comes
I shall be released
From the shackles of my mind
And the gurney upon which I've been forced to sleep
You won't get me to leave
No matter how hard you beg or you plead
I will stay, bedside,
For the conclusion of the broadcast
Set in pixels too sharp against the contrast
Of gray skies above
As red blood punctuates the end
At both corners of your lips, parched
Far past the point of memory slips
Afraid to ask, if memory serves,
Do you even recognize me
I watch as you being your slow, gradual descent
A curse of indeterminable action
Reflex, Reflect, Reaction, Repeat
Internally bleed
Slip away into the caverns of a clouded mind
Piecing together all the crucial moments of a life
Well-lived, divided and straight
A path of recourse
Re-evaluate the meaning of existence
As it must mean something more
When you're staring down death
As it knocks on your door

Does he welcome you
With a mischievous grin
And a simple gesture of hand to wrist to bone
Or is ignorance just the bliss you need

Either way, I'll blow you one final kiss
When you come storming up my porch
And breathe like fire
Knocking at my door
I am released.