THE HOSPITAL

I do wish I could lie

But I think I came here to die

Luck has lucked out, smart fate

Plus love, hope, fear, now mates

Have come together to make this visit

Necessary, though I’d rather not to live it

Is what I fear the fact of death

Or the idea of death?

Becoming No Thing, empty, no self, gone

Expunged, lost, like lint on a lawn

Yet my nothinghood is instantly attained

The clerk declares my insurance card stained

Said insurance to my name does not belong

Should I jump, run out and burst into song?

But jerkily the numbers curl up to match

I’m certified, caught, plus add yet this catch

There are millions of bits that might go wrong

Accumulating and merging as life grows long

My brain can fail a billion plus ways

My cells turn cancerous in less than a day

Can they truly discover what’s wrong with me

Or will it take another lifetime to find out and see?

The marketers command the staff to smile

Pay docked if they don’t grin all the while

I can’t crack my mouth – they don’t know what’s wrong

My melody’s weakening like bad country songs

I’ve already enjoyed dozens of tests

They say I must stay here to sample the rest

If I survive them will I then survive?

For a dark, silent moment I sense hope revive

My new home’s so like the cathedrals of old

Sky topping naves, spires bright bold

Both working so hard to cancel reality

Banking to profit on simple duality

Life or death, God or chaos, yes or no

All the time running to patch up a show

Profiting on hope, lives and souls

Their faith cut across by multiple holes

The species survives. We don’t

Immortality can’t, won’t

On earth as in heaven

We humor ourselves with bright lights to leaven

The unpalatable fact

We’re not coming back

Like John Wayne grunting “we’re going in”

I feel like a hero as I’m stuffed in a bin

The body scan reports I’m not heartless

The brain MRI says I’m boring and artless

They can’t find the reason I’m ill and still here

Is it time to just google and buy me a seer?

Yet weakly my idea of death starts to die

Though the chill down my neck sticks and lies

My shrunken self is still sorry scared

All my tight senses weary beware

But I’m only here because of others

The lengthy trunk line of sisters and mothers

Nearly four billion years to get to this place

Formed from stars, volcanoes, plague wars to race

Through the wet fields and dank seas of Father earth

The magnified microcosm of curses and hearths -

Long may live this crazed crowd once I’ve turned into cloud

We come and go but it will keep going

Past our fantastic mistakes, past all our knowing

The planet is hived with high intelligences

Even if we masters have lost all our senses

Past the car parks and dust heaps beneath where I’ve lain

The rivers and mountains still will remain