The Queue for the E.R.

The queue for the mortuary just waits and waits!
Building up the static line,
Consisting  of you and yours and me and mine!
May be static but, the queue space decreases erratically, rapidly!
Off we go, we have a crash,
Resus' in full play,
Screens erected, so no-one can see, a person who's losing their life,
To join the deceased in potential debauchery, be in heaven or hell,
Unable to tell,
Time controls destiny...dreams forsaken... maybe,
While waiting in line....time dashes, flashes...initial first births, creep in like rashes!
Growing and spreading all red and infected,
The nurses work hard, seeing no-one's neglected,
So might you make it,....will you recover, to spend the rest of your life with family or lover,
Whether the spirit runs free pleasant and fresh...,
or whether it remains ensnared in it's mesh....between heaven and hell if you're not getting well,
it's a terrible place so they say......purgatory!
The vomiting chick all covered in sick...makes all around feel ill,
The ***** old drunk who smells like a skunk, not had a bath in a month,or more,
The sad person indeed, did not not have a clue if they really wanted to carry it through,were they down,
didn't care in their hospital gown!
the gnarled up old dear, in her eye there's a tear, she doesn't even know why she's here,
the kid with a cut won't get off his ****, full of rage, irate,
In A+E some lives becomes extinguished,
while others make it through.....thank goodness,
Well it is said the queue for E.R, is truly pure hell!
Copyright, Olivia Kent 22/03/2013.

Like feeding birds alert for movement,
we watch the flickering images,
distracted by sounds, voices, music,
taking flight from raw deal reality.

It's the images that move our minds,
not the pain, despair, lack of care.
We crave the shock, the resus, shaking
the bordom from our souls. Life's victims
might exchange given the chance to compare.

The doctors said you weren’t allowed
To see Mum in her final hours;
It wasn’t safe to will her on
Nor wet her lips with stolen snow
In case the virus you’d bring in
Might claim asylum on the ward.

Behind her mask Mum couldn’t tell
The story of her party trick:
Apple Pie with packet custard
Baked to death and turned to cinders,
Fed to Dad with stoic humour.    

No doubt it’s best you hadn’t seen
The carnage of the resus room
The febrile pumps of hand and nail
The gasps of good-intentioned strain
That reached a pitch at ten to three
And then from shrill went monkish silent.

On Barn Hill snow is falling thick
The Gaderbrook is filling up
The numb routine the porter starts
Now takes disfigured life away
And Northwick Park can breathe again.

Trolleys line the corridor
Like ships waiting to enter port.

In the resus room
Heart monitors clang
Like ships’ bells in the fog.