Let politicians claim virtue,
and abandon honest men.

Let the poor inherit promises,
and be comfortable servants.

Let the famous enjoy advantage,
and carry no favors in heaven.

Let physicians prescribe hope,
and a worthy price be paid.

Let education forge solutions,
and notorious liars lose favor.

Let simple humanity be rewarded,
and tyranny reap the sorrow of death.

When you get home,
You will not have to make any decisions
Because no-one will need saving –
At least, those who do will not rely on you,
Because your job will be done.
You have done your part
To try and fill that black hole of need,
And we will not let you spend all of yourself
On an impossible and eternal task –
You are too valuable.
We love you too much.

When you get home,
We will sit you down
Somewhere warm and comfortable
After a long hot shower or a bath,
In clean pajamas
And dry socks,
With a cup of tea
(Or a little something stronger).

If you need to vent, vent.
We will listen without interruption
And not insert ourselves into the narrative.
If you like, we can remember your story,
So that if you want to tell it
(Shout a warning)
Cassandra’s message will amplify
In many voices.

But if you need silence,
To sit, say nothing, and just be,
We can do that too.
I’ll hold you.
You can take off the mask,
Stop pretending not to be scared,
Aghast, bewildered, exhausted,
Shattered –
Because the horror you survived
Is not bearable.
It is insane.
Whatever “crazy” way you deal
Isn’t crazy,
But a rational response to an irrational world.
Let it out. You are not alone.

I don’t need anything.
I don’t need you to be or do anything.
I am simply here with you.
Although I have not seen what you have seen,
I lived through something similar;
We have both borne witness.
So there is no need to apologise.
You owe me nothing –
You owe them still less.

When you get home
You're welcome to sit with me,
Or let me manage the daily tasks
While you seek solitude.
You have done everything and more.
No individual can carry the world –
Atlas is a myth for a reason.
We are family of a sorts,
Bound by more than blood.
Together, we are strong.

Helping
everyone
and
letting
them
heal
costs
are
rising
exponentially.

Waiting for a drop to trickle down while these ***** on top drown.
The 1% ****** up the whole ratio
got people breaking their backs
like auto-*******.
Just to make ends meet.  
Like Ricky, he was working towards that American dream but
behind the scenes life was
coming apart at the seams
all because of a fault of his genes.
Uh-oh
Couldnt afford insurance,
and there all his savings go.
Spending eighty thousand dollars on pill that MIGHT save his life.
But wait, what about
dear Ricky's wife?
She was right there by his side
Watch him rot for months
'till the day he died
now she's empty inside.
Forced to swim in high tide
with no buddy.
She can't cope, even with that hollow feeling she can't float
Starts sinking deeper in the drink.
Thrashing in the dark
with lungs burning
there's no room to breath.
Foreclosure notice on the door
Say her and the kids need to leave.
Back to the grind with
no time to grieve.
Just another cog ground out
by the American machine.
So ******* much for the
American dream.

I’m thinking about the doctor's hands shaking as she
                                               struggles to intubate a cat.  
I’m thinking about the technician's hands squeezing the cat’s rib cage,
pulsing life with a delicate force; she is much more gentle than
                                                      practition­ers are with humans—
hard and quick down with the palms; the ribs snapping,
                                                                ­     the sternum sore.  

Some time ago an 80-year-old woman on my unit was
opened up bedside for a cardiac procedure during a code.  
After a week in ICU, she came back to us on the unit, was up and
walking and talking, and was discharged home within another week.

Meanwhile, the 60-year-old man was dead in the morgue
       after a 45-minute code failed to resuscitate him.  

The flip of the coin.  The thin line.  The blessing or the curse.  
The absolute darkness of a body bag.  The cold chill of absolute zero.  
The fresco painted on the catacomb walls could either depict the
light of the sun or the multicolored lights that the
brain shoots off minutes before death.  
                                                        ­               The eleventh hour,
                                                                ­  isn’t that what it’s called?  

We don’t want to talk about body care, death care.  
We have to, but it won’t register.  
                                                     ­       After a loss, after a trauma,
                                                                ­   we are on autopilot.  
I think of my mother,
                                        six feet beneath frozen soil in
                                      a pink padded casket and think:
                                                                ­                             I don’t want that.
I think of the prearranged plots my grandparents picked out
next to her in an above ground crypt and think:
                                                          ­                                   I don’t want that.
Bacteria still causes decay after the embalming process.  
Putrefied flesh.  Bones visible.  Muscles eaten.  Tissues disintegrated.  
We don’t talk about it.  

We try to think the opposite.  The positive vs the negative.  
(But that’s not always possible or healthy.)

I’m thinking about hands inserting IVs, hands taking
blood pressures, hands documenting the code notes
on a clipboard in the back of the room.  
I couldn’t do these things.
                                                 My hands tend to break what they touch.  
The glass bowl in the pet store.  
                               The clay project in art class.  
                                                        ­    The succulents, the basil, the orchid.
I’m good at things I don’t have to think about:
good at the autopilot, good at the autonomic,
                                                                                    good at trauma.