The wires are poking out
and a small childish plaster
covers over a broken artery,
turning to the colour of black pudding.
Cold toast sits on a plate
next to the smallest vat
of salted butter
and somewhere amongst
whiskey and tiredness,
I have become ill again.

Politicians organise themselves
like smoking aids for quitting.
They claim to start a war
against the malformations they rely upon.
Old news spreads like rumour
as the nurses tend,
bend necks over bed-sheets,
learning to gossip over
the topic of tumours,
and suicide rates in men.

Mothers wring their hands
beside comatose sons with
screws fitted into knee-caps
and a procession of staples across the skull.
Entropy has sent us here,
only partial, always anxious
for when the curtain will fall,
willing to rely on healing crystals
if all medicine fails, as the church
cries for prayer or else: acceptance.

The tree-tops peek out
and evidence the wind
that keeps on blowing,
only promising a boundless freedom
now that I am removed from it.
New patients arrive and leave
as fast as it takes me
to learn their names.
Nothing has changed
since I stopped drinking.

I am always the last one
out the door.