happy wife, happy life
and even though there’s no such thing
as a happy wife—
most likely she’s married to a man—
it doesn’t hurt to aim high

1.
when you're a few pages into a novel
you might decide--
is this the world i want to live in
for a week?

2.
useful or useless?
pertinent criticism
for any work of art

greetings from the neurotrauma ICU

BED 1
morbidly obese female arrest
brain death protocol tomorrow

BED 2
drugged out assault victim
intubated for combativeness
to get the breathing tube in his mouth
we had to pry a bag of *******
out of his mouth

BED 3
21 year old arrest
80 pounds, looks like spinabifuda
claw hands, twisted feet
but no
autistic but no birth defects
just starved to death
by his caretaker brother

BED 5
50 year old woman
potential locked-in syndrome
cause unknown
possible she sees and hears everything
but completely unresponsive
can’t even blink an eye
to signal i’m here

BED 6
51 year old CORE patient
2 day protocol
for ***** donation

BED 7
biker crash
seemed ok until his MRI
revealed a spine so compressed
he spent 10 hours in the OR

BED 9
30 year old car crash
trached, quadrapalegic
buckets of secretions
chugging a wide-eyed
40 breaths a minute

BED 10
man fell out of a tree
huffing cleaning spray
we found a **** ring in the trauma bay
and upon intubation
his ******* fell out

here’s the brilliance of Starbucks—
when people order fancyass drinks
they get shunted off to purgatory
to wait forever for their ludicrous concoctions
while i get my simple coffee right away

when it comes to playing music
i’m not chasing the dream
the dream is chasing me

i checked
with my fellow medical professionals
and we all agree
patients who’ve been shot—
even when it’s much after the fact—
they’re always cranky

it's my only talent
i know where to dig for the gold
and my gold is a renewable resource
music with momentum
harmonies that levitate
meaning where there is none
motivation in a vacuum
women who steal your breath with a glance