Emergency, Christmas Eve, and: Opioid, Alcohol, Despair

Emergency, Christmas Eve

—internship, AIDS, 1982

—Five beds later & did I say I was still highOn adrenaline, or indifferent? The board glared downThe night's affliction: Fever. FatigueFrom cancer. Sudden cardiac death. The waiting roomBuzzed with sweat, insomnia. The 2 a.m. wheezesWalked in ushered in the night-walkingFaces. I pulled back the curtain: a fibrillatingBeat—whose heart beating & beating? Maybe theThrill still there the gasping down the hall whichClot how fast which gurney—wantingTo die? Nearly forgotten? 3 a.m.: the not-forsakenVariations visitations from ghosts or angels? My EmergencyRoom! My Shift! Rushed in by sirenHooked to opioids IV drips floppy tubes frightening                        —the chest breathing in—thinOxygen through a hole his voided throat fast-Gasped-for machined air, in the ICU.

The walled-in irises—Dilate—not from desire. Too late. The darkThat falls from small front windows from aboveThe floor of his fine skull bones, such delicateBones—like no other alcove                                Within a room withinA nest nestled in tubes. Was he—Sucking in death his lips the breathOf ashes? How I wished for him to awakenEven to the pain where it pierces the vein

The bone the shins cracking for lackOf oxygenation. DestinationBeneath the oily sheets, how is it possible—                                & in the foyer? Viruses:

Drumming, drumming . . .In closed cerebrum. Delirium. Peritoneum . . .Code Blue someone's seizing in triage hurry will she—Make it onto the white board? They're all waiting,Doctor. No worry, when you can do it without sleepBetter, when you can do it standing upIn your sleep you know you're professional.You're damn good. My God what a nightOf textbook bodies, for isn't illness logical whenIn a book? From standard deviations, Plato's—Body—Gray's phantom dream-boys: elegantAnatomy—                                Who is this golden boy?Heaved off the metalStretcher, Canal Street alley? Wasted pastyPetals of a (was it still—his) body? WretchedWithout his pointed tip boots? All of 'em: piss yes pissPus blood gut gushing welling more like broken glassStrewn all over the halls beds gurneys how much moreCan I learn from this from what I already knewFrom one more banal cut—                                As in: one new—wound—Arriving—the bodies theyCame. They wept. Festered. Would not heal.There—by the shade—in detail. So much I wasWith them there—mysterious                                -ly human. Holy.Not some kind of fragment. And I want to askOf my guests there Do you have a name? A face?A place? So much was I with them,                        No longer beautiful                                                -ly occupying—Their bodies—

Opioid, Alcohol, Despair

1Feel for your lying there, how could I fail        a man lying there poor guy, lies there; there's—                nowhere to go. He can barely lift his limbs.Moreover his core, contracted—you can't see it        has fallen, into the asphalt, X marked there                —his early burial—there? Thoughsome nights (I would think) his brain                                        —awakens—        to a sound. Of commiseration.                Destination. As to a hymn a momentstretching—        itself, though not a mirror cracking: faces                in a progression of shame, of the same self-loathing,how could it not now be him & I know        it's wrong to stare at blank gaze. Worse, to shut out                the gaze. Maybe next time I might not pass onto the other side; might even give him a five        dollar bill or an apple or a handful of quarters,                dimes (how could he buy vodka with that?)so that he can sleep, piss not in public maybe        next time, throw in a throw-blanket too so that I                                        can sleep, walk on.

2                And this is the way it happens some wintrydescent out of the blue to below-freeze weather        wheezes a man asleep on a mat in a tunnel in Phillyneed not be hail sleet snow could be an alley sunnyLA or right in the heart of Silicon Valley the story        has...