the doctor drinks alone in rooms full of people while the diagnostic
machines hum their mechanical lullabies and somewhere
in a ***** apartment someone is writing about truth
which begins in lies the way all healing begins in pain

and who are we to separate the fever from the cure
the bottle from the blood the word from the wound
when every morning brings another diagnosis
another reason to doubt what we called certain

let us speak then of honest frauds and corrupt saints
of the perfect symmetry of broken things
how every cigarette burns closer to clarity
while the nurses make their rounds in heaven

and if you ask me which is more true
the test results or the trembling hand
I will tell you that beauty lies in neither
but in the space between where doubt drinks deeply

and goes on and on without commas or full stops
because that's how the truth moves through our bodies
like a disease we mistake for healing like a lie
we mistake for love like a poem we mistake for life