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the dirty poet Aug 2018
a wacko version of hamlet

the patient came up to us raving
GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT
a naked swollen giant
his basketball *****, his endless belly
every system failing
we prepared to put him out
so we could stick a tube down his throat
plug him on a ventilator
and insert lines for safekeeping
GOODNIGHT, I LOVE YOU
he tried to lean off the bed
take it easy man, i said, restraining him
SUSAN  
who’s susan? asked the nurse
GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT
good night, sweet prince, i said as we gave him the drugs
GOODNIGHT, I LOVE YOU, GOODNIGHT
we intubated him and took him down to the OR
where he passed twenty minutes later
I am a -9 Glasgow Scale,
even in life,
I should be intubated,
someone should breathe for me
....
Someone should
live for me
...
This life is not mine
anymore
...
It is just breathing
and waking up
and breathing
and waking up
... and breathing
... and waking up

One
      T w o
               T H r e e
                           F O U r
                                  F I V E
times in one day
...
Let someone else live this life!
Let someone else die this daily death!
...
I cannot do this anymore
I need other means to breathe
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2020
I remember the Fall
I remember the bokeh

Placed in a vase and kept by our bedroom
window

It took your breath away, fed off your lungs
and grew so monstrous by dark

We tried in vain to replace what was lost
with the artificial:

Albuterol haze, Gaussian distribution

It failed, as you know

And I too fell within the blur of the rebound effect,
struggling to keep from panic

Then rang alarums that lay-in-wait, then came red lights,
then came shouting for help

You laid on the livingroom floor, intubated

Life nearly snuffed out

Me in tremors, two cats hiding

You would survive, but neither of us would
ever be the people before

Clearly, not all blur is equal, each has its own aesthetic quality

Mine tends to fall under the umbrella of disturbing thought patterns

We each reflect on different things
about that day

My fail-safe is trying not to remember at all
This poem is a companion piece to my wife, Mrs. Timetable's work 'How It Reminded Me of Fall,' also here on HP. It recalls a very dark day several years ago, when a reaction to a bad medication nearly took her life.

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/3469122/how-it-reminded-me-of-fall/
Chapter VII
Sheesham's Staff  

Vernarth lies reclining on Sheesham's bunk beds of fire. Wood and Incense with ultra sensory olfactory powers, to design elemental and supernatural hearts, to house and be adaptable to hyper connectivity. In the Hindu religion, the akasha is the foundation and essence of all things in the material world; the first palpable and concrete material element created by the god Brahmá (air, fire, water, earth are the others). It is one of the classic elements of Hinduism, pañcha-majá-bhuta or ‘five great elements’; its main feature is sabda (sound). In Sanskrit this word means "space". In other Indian languages this word is conceptualized as "heaven".
It is the physical and eternal substance Akasha, of the ether that flows through the Akasha-Nautas, of each parapsychological regression. Vernarth takes a staff called "Sheesham's Cane", which he acquired while eager to deliver it to his beloved Tuscany in the Cathedral of Santa Maria dei Fiori, in one of his Regressive Lives.

They awaited him, stunned by the tyrannized force of the nobles in Florence, from which he was once again delayed by the barley and fatuous gods, close to Porcellino. He waited long hours for his beloved Madalena to come out of the Eucharistic ceremony. While he carried his staff in his right hand and a rectangular box for his hand on the left, inside he carried essences of potpourri of lavender and vellorita, a ring with amethyst stone covered by a concave gold bolus. In the supra-circular contour he wore medieval silver Etrurian ornaments from the Feast of Past Barley.

Vernarth is intubated with his therapist of the Veda typology, by the Samiama preferred to his meditation, concentration and Samadhi to merge with the universe and travel his Life until the end of Gaugamela (his most vigorous Regressive Life), while he was on his virtual journey Akashico walk the gods, disrupting his senses beyond all. Etrestles took a zither sounding the merits of the ear by prolonging his hearing of white cloaks and stereo silence. It leads them to the desired state of mind, such as the set of affects and emotions.

The fear of death is a somewhat natural concoction in the human being, although in too deep cases it constitutes a phobia (thanatophobia) that requires non-addictive treatment. But even when that phobia does not exist, but regression under hypnosis is sometimes traveling to the near and distant point of the Sun on its elliptical, almost getting lost in our galaxy, like the earth in its aphelion.
So in this way our great hero continues to travel in eternity, he never dies! For his life is a multi-dimensional regressive, to eternally navigate and ride through the scrolls of history with Alexander Magnus. Both sitting in Lotus on the Gordian Knot.


Past life experiences can be attributed to genetic inheritance, Akashic records, universal consciousness, telepathy, fantasies, or memories of readings or movies. As his mother Luccica brought, conceiving your son, very young of only 22 years, supposedly dying in a vascular accident, a fact that breaks the chain of genetic descent and allows us to suppose that there would be extra-cerebral memory. But it is reborn in Florence, Macedonia and Sudpichi and Gaugamela.

Names, places and dates can help to discern if it is a fantasy or a real experience. To accept it as such, it is recommended to check at least six matching data, such as names, dates, country, language, customs, weather, clothing, etc ... Many people ignored the dates or the name of the place where they lived. This makes it very difficult to verify such data, except in very few cases, so the lack of historical data does not necessarily constitute proof that they are frauds or fantasies of the hypnotized person. But this unforgettable feat of 331 b.C, is a date where Bacchus swallowed the history of the Universe at once. There is nothing left here, not to remember and much less to re-fiddle the citations of the Gods exhuming the brief metaphysical times that scent their intuitions.

Names: Vernarth Prince of Sudpichi, of the Horcondising Empire, of the Talamite Celestial Hymn.
Date: in the year of one of October 331 B.C.
Coordinates: 36 ° 21′36 ″ N, 43 ° 15′0 ″ E In decimal 36.36 °, 43.25 °
Country: Chile - Ancient Persia - Babylon
Language: Mapudungun, Hellenic and Persian.
Customs: Military consequence, phalanx, cavalry, archers and siege weapons such as Sarisa among others.
Climate: Autumn, dry and temperate climate. Little to hide.
Clothing: Exomis and war costumes. Agema elite guards, shields, Phrygian line helmets and multiple infantry shells.

Alexander Commanders:
Vernarth: First Commander of Heavy, Light and Thessalonian Infantry. Others, Hephaestion, Crater, Parmenio, Ptolemy, Perdiccas, Antígono, Clito, Nearchus, Seleuco, Ariston, Simias, Ceno, Ariston, Glaucias, Sopolis.

Thus in the post-equinox period of 331 B.C. Vernarth, he proclaimed himself a faithful Macedonian soldier, in the barbarian fields in Tel Gomel. And its circular deployment is destined to its epic rooted in this feat of being a unique part and valued by his therapist Walekira, attending to all the symptoms of this displacement due to a renowned parapsychological regression, which he never thought he would reach his origins as a Macedonian militia.

Wlakiria playing a flute from the elder ensemble, he readied himself for the ****** lines to keep him tied to his choir choir of the Bumodos. He would begin with the last sessions to supply them with the liquids through his veins, to take him to the advanced snatched bastions, where he lay upright, but with his head on the backwash of his headaches and touch-ups of approach to the lagoon of the Five Golden Swans that they agreed to his graft as the whipping commander of the Achaemenids.

Ellipses Gaugamela / Vernarth approaches:

Darius confused with the strength of the forces that came from Vernarth, resorted in the same way as in Issos, he has no other choice but to flee, causing the disbandment of his own by the lacerating wounds caused by the branches of Sauco, which were the branches of his arms numb, but guillotining. Every time a cavalryman turned to see who was following him, a sword appeared cutting their heads. . The Macedonian victory at Gaugamela is final. Alejandro is at the peak of his power looking from the sky. Now he has the clear path to advance toward the very heart of his enemy, the weakened Persian Empire.

After Gaugamela, Babylon was easily subdued. In Persia the cities of Susa, Persepolis, where Alexander burned down the Royal Palace and Pasargada succumbed one after another. In the spring of 330 B.C., Alexander resumed his march after Darius to Media. Upon reaching Ecbatana, Darius had slipped away again, taking refuge in Bactriana. Vernarth was surprised by the great general with a monumental average Sarisa spear, piercing a hundred soldiers with various spears, which one by one gently added to his hands stuffing them beyond his hands.

Alejandro Magnus said to him: beyond your strength there will be a day of knowing how to be a politician or a general to dominate the fear of the brave who shout with fear and not the cowards who shout with Courage!

Etrestles says: Although in the time I have lived in Messolonghi, I managed to be close to Scipio, as an official of the Roman State, I must compare him to your Son of Zeus, who undoubtedly at different times with a century of difference from General Scipio caudillo turned almost into a Great one, like Alexander…. I have to allow myself to simulate you in the parallel time that passes.

Replicates Vernarth: Yes Brother of good luck! The territories will be massacred. And there is no time or brave dimension to protect them. Scipio, undoubtedly comes from Messolonghi (Koumeterium Messolonghi / blessed Holy field of all heroes of all dimensions of time on earth and No), to warn us about the excesses that spray tiredness to those who are not to sleep, hunger and thirst to those who do not consume. But bravery to those who rise from the field in by the wheatfield shepherds irrigated by young sorceresses to raise Hellenic morale, from Medea perhaps to break the verb poetic with the Staff of Sheesham, to shake the earth and awaken those who need other sorceresses to awaken their consciousness and senses.

Alejandro Magnus, Etrestles and Vernarth; the three are each taken from the wood, which is the verse that supports them embedded. The infinity is painted lapis lazuli, the three look at each other and expand the chandeliers that hold them under the sky with Orion room light, whose golden ratio, as a result of the three numbers joined, the equation will tend to reflect the union of three kingdoms of divine reign.

"This communion is merged for itself for everything that is not concrete in a vague world"

To be continued… / under edition
Sheesham's Staff
Sweet Calamity Aug 2021
No real connections and no restraints…
I watch you breathing and feeling faint.
I hold your hand and ask you to fight.
I will tell you, your attitude can save your life.

I know you’re alone, please know I am here.
I see you starving for oxygen, I feel your fear.
Please listen to the doctor trying to prescribe,
their knowledge and experience can save your life.

Please try my darling, you’re just too young.
Starving for oxygen can leave you high strung.
Don’t you understand the BiPAP can save your life? Or should we start the process and notify your wife?

Sweetheart, I get that this is hard!
You can’t breathe deeply, your lungs are scarred.
I know that I will always ask for too much.
We need to get you out of bed and sit you up.

But, let me tell you the other route.
If you give up, unfortunately, we have our doubts.
We might end up having to intubate…
And leave those strong wrists in soft restraints.

This is something we as nurses know,
Unfortunately, once intubated your prognosis is low.
Most Covid patients never wean off of the vent,
So say goodbye to your family and friends.

I’ll hold your hand no matter what you decide,
I’ll hold the phone to your ear listening to your families last goodbyes…
We will all cry and all of our hearts will break,
You’ll just just be another statistic the media will define as “fake.”






… please know I’ll always remember you by heart,  I’ll remember your story from end to start, I’ll never forget what you’ve been through, because that’s what we as nurses do.
when the collapse came in the form of like,
total,
I was trying to add things up but they wouldn't reconcile
and I lay there for some time
but in a while which may have been a long while
I pulled myself together as if my life were not the drapes (and who uses drapes anyway?)

later in the hospital and after they intimated I should be intubated
I closed down like an old TV to have a bit of time for me

even later still ( because the doctors are overworked )
I got a diagnosis
'try some self hypnosis',
said the self conscious  
young intern..

I spurned his advice
because that word's
kind of nice

and went quietly
on my way.
the dirty poet Jul 2021
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
Universal Thrum Mar 2020
Social distancing, per cdc guidance, calls for six feet of space. A week ago that was a punch line.
I walk into a local grocery for the second time in as many days to pay an energy bill that I missed the first time around. The lady at the counter wears long leopard braids and labors over a copy machine in service to a big fat momma who had the modern Peabo set as her ringer, and as Peabo sang a few bars, the minutes dragged on in full elucidated purgatory, I remained transfixed by the ways in which we are so humble and meager, yet strangely beautiful.

Anyways as the minutes continue to roll in the exposed air, I sense a man approach from behind, I take a few steps forward beyond the roped line towards the counter, and in sheer pack solidarity he too closes the distance. Its at this time that an inner voice reminds me of the cdc guidance and I shuffle a few feet forward. The man behind closes the distance and then coughs. He begins to speak into his cell phone, the raspiest voice I've ever heard, like burnt tin foil, but recently intubated, quiet, weak. My fight or flight kicks in, an urge to confront quakes and passes, civilization holds. The copy machine continues to hum and baffle sweet Taylor and her braids. Big Fat Momma's nails click on the counter, the posted paper sign informs customers that no returns will be accepted but fresh produce that does not meet standards can be exchanged. A lady from the checkout line laughs and talks about icing for her sons birthday cake, her cart is full, she looks early forties and slightly tired, but still good. A store clerk has bright red hair contrasted by her creamed coffee skin. People are wiping everywhere, wearing gloves. Wiping surfaces, screens, baskets. People hold paper towels in their hands to pick up baskets, open doors. Somebody told me they Lysoled their debit card. And the man behind me continues to cough and wheeze. He's not covering either, not even turning away. I'm at the counter with Taylor now, and I get a good look at him. He's a big fat man bald as a shiny tan bowling ball wearing a yellow T-shirt and God bless him a full on bond villain eye patch. He's got a goatee and mustache, and now I have a pain in my neck.

Camus Camus, sweet plague dumpling, dim sum.

The first day declared a national emergency, I walked into the Hong Kong House. It was all so much, the President called it the 'Chinese Virus' and there I was confronted by the white board of specials, all written in chinese characters, it was too much, this time I ran. After collecting myself, we rallied the party and walked back in and the first person we see is an asian fellow with luggage. Coughing behind walls. We tried to order dim sum, but the guy who usually makes it already left the building.
Boaz Priestly Apr 2020
i split myself open
and it wasn’t poetic
and it wasn’t for you

was it a gurney i spent
two hours laying on
intubated and unconscious?

remember sinking under
feeling naked without
any metal in my face and ears

i put my trust in the
hands of a surgeon
freeing me up with a scalpel

didn’t ask what my ribs
looked like
even though i was curious

could he see my heart?
did he see a body that could be
made into a home again?

the poet that i am
would like to think so
that he pressed a key into my hands

this key carved from flesh
and bone and bruised ribs
finally a welcome kind of pain

this pain of something new
thick scars like a promise
like coming home
after so long
Jennifer McCurry Aug 2020
The Lake

I stand before her
She is bold and blue
And cracks
With boning pressure and the shock of release

To bobbing sternum sheath
As if the chest
Of this now breathing frozen lake
Intubated by the will
And warm might of the sun

It’s rays like pumping hands
She moans
And underneath the sloshing of Iced veins
As they push through

Newborn

A magic shot
Shudders through
And shouts entrapment

Corrupting the silent calm
Sentinel of the wild

They stand watching
And fear her resurrection

She holds in pale blue
Electric palm
The capacity
And surreal intent
To tread through stability
And destroy the taproot
Of all that is known

“The ancient map”
And take down their King
With cool
Uncaring flinch

She breathes
And her chest
Rises
And falls
Great calamity
A cold terror

Blows through the sleeves of strong men
Spreads frostbite through the tips of fingers

Of able hands
Crippled by her might

And crestfallen
They disembark
On readied boats
On the opened currents
She has shown

— The End —