"emts" poems
Just ten minutes after I'd revved the engine
I was only nine miles away from the love of my life
Day dreaming of when we’d met just eight short months ago
Soaring at seventy down that country road
Only six more miles until she’d be in my arms again
Five years ago thoughts of love would have seemed so far out of sight
Yet four times I've already proposed, “too soon,” she’d always say
Amazing how in three seconds your entire life can change
With just two tires there’s little room for error
When one blew out I hit the asphalt, hard
In a wreck like that there’s zero chance I’d survive
One hour later the ambulance arrived at last
EMTs pressed two paddles against my chest
Shocks were delivered three times
At the hospital doctors performed four operations
Five months I spent in a coma
Followed by six months of physical therapy relearning to walk
In time all seventeen broken bones had set and healed
It cost me eight grand to buy a new bike
Now nine years later I’m still riding, fearless, wife on the back
The tenth time I asked, she finally said yes
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
Now:
The EMTs respond.
A Jane Doe is found dead.
Beneath the I-90 overpass.
They lift her
Zip her into a bag,
And transport her to the morgue.
They can’t feel sad.
Today:
The few wispy strands of hair that remain
Dangle haphazardly from her scabby head
Jagged misshapen teeth protrude from dry cracked lips
betraying breath that stinks of infection and decomposition
Vermin gnaw on exposed flesh while parasites feast within.
Her eyes dim as her body putrifies.
Last Week:
Mission workers prop her up against the wobbly chain link fence
A thin blanket is wrapped around her bony shoulders and
Her blue-tarp awning is adjusted
She would be less wet and cold.
For a night.
They leave a cheese sandwich and chicken noodle soup.
The rats eat most of it.
She wouldn’t have kept it down anyway.
Last Month:
The shelter is scary and dangerous.
She couldn’t sleep without nightmares and her screaming disrupted other ‘guests’.
The shelter workers apologize and put her out at 2:19 AM.
She finds a spot between two dumpsters.
It reeks of **** but is unoccupied.
Sometime in the dark she is ***** and beaten by two crackheads.
The crime is unreported.
Last Year:
The fluorescent lights sting her eyes.
The antiseptic smell burns her nose.
The noise and chaos that surround her make her dizzy and disoriented.
She fights hard to get away but is restrained by strong hands – then leather straps.
A painful jab in her arm and then nothing.
Days or weeks later she emerges in a haze.
Kindly eyes greet her.
They stay with her.
They accompany her to the shelter.
They tell her to come back for follow-on care.
She never sees them again.
Before:
The divorce rips her heart in two.
She has nothing.
She is nothing.
Her world crumbles beneath her and she crumbles with it.
Where would she go?
What would she do?
Everything has become so wrong.
Once Upon a Time:
She was happy. Joyful.
Filled with life and hope.
He was smart, funny, successful.
Together they were magical.
Perfect.
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 3:21 PM UTC
the car seemed to be gliding on glass
the last inconvenient instant before impudent impact
the mangled mass of metal and his black crisp body
a spectacle for the masses, all 4 of them
2 volunteer fire fighters and 2 EMTs
later, his father, blind now in one eye
from America’s diabetes, had Ramona
drive him to the spot, to the dead oak
as big around as an oil barrel
dead long before Paul’s 1996 Ford Escort
decided to take a go at it
daddy had to see the place
that infinite space between
yesterday and the tomorrow
that would never come, even though
he had already seen, through his one good eye
his boy’s charred carcass at the county morgue
resting on a silver slab, the clean and cold bed
where he would spend his last night
before the fiery furnace,
Ramona and he could keep his ashes
no need for a big service, no money for one either
but Dub, “Paul's boss down to the auto parts store,”
opened his wallet as wide as it would go
for the cremation and a nice urn
Paul would be missed, by Daddy and Dub
and once in a great while, in the fast and furious world
of the flat gray town where he lived and died
someone would ask, whatever happened to
that old boy at the auto parts store
the one who limped a bit as he walked,
the one who rarely talked but always
smiled through his yellow teeth
when he placed the goods carefully
on the counter
Dec 5, 2013
Dec 5, 2013 at 1:31 PM UTC
i need this listerine for my bad
breath he said, but i knew better
than to give him a quarter.
he begged me with blue eyes
and every puff we exhaled into
the back bay that grey morning.
i’m here to help
i answered him
and i’ve been there-
at McLean in ART, where the girls
didn’t like me cause my music
was a trigger. but
i pulled through, sometimes
on my own, with help
from a court appointed drug group
(even though i carpooled
every wednesday in a baked
out mini van).
i’m here because day after day
i dragged my spinning
body to the toilet, sun dawning,
to spew bright yellow fluid
into the waiting water.
and i’ve hit the ocean floor:
i used to sniff the bowl to make
the ***** come up faster.
i’d say if i get up again in less than ten
minutes, it’s gonna be a rough day
(but yesterday started this way
and i ended it with a beer
in my hand anyway).
i’m here because when
officer spirito dragged my racing
body through the hallways handcuffed,
because of the purses
missing from the locker room,
i still spent the night on the
closet floor rocking back and
forth, knees to pounding
chest, a hollow
voice on the phone saying i’ll be fine
(but i know that ***** cut
with ether and i’m gonna
need a hospital).
i told my sponsor
i wanna get clean cause
dope is taking my friends one by
one like bowling pins, and i’m lonely
cause all my ex boyfriends
are still locked up
upstate. she just told me
to pray to god
(but everybody knows
that prayer only works
in emergencies).
i’m here because that relapse
my first year of college got me
pretty close to death. i didn’t know
i could puke that far and
the emts didn’t know
a heart could beat that fast.
but **** the past
and **** the future. i can’t
say much about the rest
of my life, but i can
make sure i’m sober the rest
of this night. you can get through
centuries one hour at a time, so
since i know what you want it for
why would i give you that quarter?
no response except a drop
of spit hung from his silver beard
like a pendulum, and the smell
of the chicken i left to cook
too long inside that soup kitchen.
if i didn’t laugh, i would have
cried the whole
time that he said to me
i need this
listerine, baby,
i need listerine
i need this
listerine for my bad
breath.
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 12:11 AM UTC
It all begins with pounding fists
against my door, and men with guns
and yellow tape, and me afraid,
I’m on the floor and crawling toward
the front room drapes to peak outside,
oh what in the world have I done?
A bit relieved, I find out why
a regiment is in my yard,
they say the man that lived next door
has turned up dead behind his shed,
they said he died an awful way,
with eyes ****** out by who knows
what, or why, but either way a
nasty death; poor guy.
The landscape man called 911,
but what he saw he wouldn’t say,
was so surprised to find him dead,
he swallowed his tongue, his face all red,
and there they lie both side by side
the one alive, the other dead.
The EMTs revived the one,
the older guy had long since died,
the guy who lived, they took away
to where? don’t know, they didn’t say,-
but rumor is a padded cell
where all he does both day and night
is moan and drool, he just ain’t right
from what he saw that spooked him.
Within a week I notice things
around the house (not his, but mine)
the porch out back, the wet wood stack,
the shifting earth, the sticking doors,
disgusting insects on the floor,
the pungent stench from underneath
the house, the vents that weep a
sickly brown and soupy **** I
must confess in ignorance,
I didn’t know a house could bleed.
I try some bleach, some cleaning spray,
but just can’t scrub the **** away,
it just gets worse, and just when I
can take no more a chasm cracks
behind the stack of sticky wood,
and from the hole a flying horde
of Satan’s pawns and slugs and prawns
and beasts of sorts I swear I’ve never
seen before come shrieking out and
flock about so loud the sound is
deafening.
And now I know what mute man saw,
he saw what’s left, the face of stone
when people die at home alone,
the rigor mortis, gouged out eyes
when killed by things that men despise,
those beasts that creep and crawl and fly
about as Satan’s pawns or slugs
or prawns or whatever else might
make them cry or swallow their tongue.
I really don’t know what the big
deal is - good god
its only BUGS.
I guess I’ll call an exterminator.
Sep 18, 2010
Sep 18, 2010 at 11:28 AM UTC
I am a thousand head-collisions of two
tractor trailers and you are the EMTs’
who come and save the motorists I put
in peril. I am that one-too-many shot of
***** that causes someone to crawl
to the bathroom on hands and knees
and you are the friend who holds their
hair back while they dispose of what
made them sick; me. I am the cancer
invading a loved one’s bones and you
are the chemotherapy that brings them
to a full recovery.
You are the beautiful arrangement of rays
that the sun glimmers down on peoples'
faces during the summer time, I am the
numbing frostbite from the coldest and
loneliest night of winter. You're all of the good
qualities made up in a person, and I am all of the flaws.
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 11:22 AM UTC
I smiled at the EMTs like a paralyzed child. A little girl asked if I was 'the lady who fell'. I didn't know what to say so I just smiled at her. I do a lot of smiling to get through my day. I just felt this hatred for what is happening right now. I know, they know, it's only a matter of time. A ball of yarn, unravels, and when you unravel it, it becomes nothing but a very long string. This string is the timeline to a life that I was looking for, thought I always wanted, where i marked the string, events occurred. You have to remember which color the event felt like, and be able to keep track of the black markers of years and birthdays and birthdays and birthdays. Understand your life on a one dimensional scale. It's humbling. But the problem is I lost the view of the shore from the ocean, and I began to unravel blank white string, adding gaps to my timeline, they get longer and longer. Save your string, do not unravel, you'll see the end when it comes. Just go, do something, stop caring, create new marks, imprints.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 12:51 AM UTC
What it feels like to od
Your mind is screaming, fingers fumbling
You poor down the pills
Throat burning, but all you can think about is pooring down more
***** covers your body
Everything shaking, spinning, darking
You lose focus on everything but the white, red, and blue pills
almost patriotic
The ***** dosen't stop
you try to keep it down, but it burns it way up and out
Soon whole pills come up
this just makes you more determined to swallow more
You just want it to end, no matter the pain
Hearing gunshots out your window, wishing it was you
Layng there, weak, covered in your own *****
then suddenly dog barking EMTs running through the house shining a Flash light in your face,
Screaming "what did you take!"
blank stare, mind too foggy
again "what did you take!"
mind reeling, stomach lurching, vomiting
screaming again
"*Into the bag. ***** into to the bag, we need to analize it*"
****** into and amulance
you're too young, you're too young, you're too...
black out
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 21, 2016 at 5:14 PM UTC
I fainted on the train.
Knees weak, face flush, fast fall
down onto the bike rack.
I went blind. Faces clouded in white
carried me off and my mind
turned to sawdust and jelly and a dreamy haze.
I dreamt of you,
the dalliance of winters past,
the tempter.
Those Black Hole eyes that see through me.
My nemesis, my rash, my everything.
My wiggle knees are settled down, I’m okay.
EMTs talk through me
This happens on the train every day,
(so they say.)
I am not afraid. I am thirsty. I am on the way to Hospital.
I’m okay.
Jun 9, 2023
Jun 9, 2023 at 3:22 PM UTC
Had they known the kind of man he was,
While he was retching
Into the oxygen mask,
EMTs might not have been surprised,
But they were,
When he tried to clean himself,
There in the life flight bay
As the rotors beat their way.
Stubborn to the nth degree,
Prouder man I never knew,
Fastidious in most his ways,
Embarrassed that a stranger
Should clean up his mess.
"I'll take care of it, Art,"
The flight nurse said,
"It happens all the time!"
He kindly lied,
And cleaned the old man's face,
And fit another mask,
And dialed the oxygen to full.
What he thought then, I cannot tell;
I hope he dreamt of going home,
Or heading to the barn another time,
Of being strong and well,
Or McKellar singing Handel's masterpiece;
I hope he felt a little wave of peace
Before he left his body, tough and old,
Before his mind felt coming cold,
I hope his final breath was a sigh
Of going down to sleep,
Of going down to gentle sleep.
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 9:41 PM UTC
I could have died
was what I thought
after the EMTs restarted
my heart
removed my foot
from my mouth
once more shot
my *** full of adrenaline.
I recall remembering
you walking in
I thought you looked
directly at me,
I gulped my martini
down and last thing
I recall was falling down.
i think it was the vision
of you or maybe my
fear of stunning beauty
or possibly the olive
was obstructing my windpipe.
All I recall is,
I fell for you.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
I have a neighbor upstairs.
He’s always having a bad day,
He’s stomping and yelling,
Which makes me feel sad.
I really don’t know much about him.
I just know he makes my life a lot harder.
He makes me rethink my life when I’m lying in bed.
I hear him walking around, while I dream.
One day he came home really mad.
That day I made a really bad mistake.
I was yelling so loud, I decided to talk to him.
He and I started to get in a huge fight.
Few minutes passed and he and I were still fighting.
We were yelling down each other throats.
I guess we were so loud, my mom came in to check on me.
Little did she know, her worst fear was behind the door?
My mom held her breath and slowly opened the door,
Her mouth dropped open,
She quickly reaches for her phone.
Her daughter is fighting with herself,
Banging her head against a wall,
Yelling “shut up, I just want to sleep”
The EMTs arrive and tie me down,
Even though in my eyes, I’m still yelling with my neighbor
He’s telling me I need to die.
I’m the worst neighbor he’s ever had,
The more I think, the more I believe him.
Maybe it is time to die
My neighbor upstairs was actually my depression.
My imagination made a man and put him in my head.
I’ve gone crazy, at least that’s what the doctors say.
But one things for sure,
Soon he will be gone and I’ll get a new neighbor.
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC