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IL Mare May 2015
A friend once asked me
What ambition will I let the teachers put
In our high school yearbook
For everyone to see
And I said I'm afraid I do not have one
And he said that how would I succeed in life
If I don't have any ambition
And I've thought about this for awhile
And to justify my answer, I replied that
You need not to have any ambition
To succeed in life
I said you just needed to be happy and
Maybe I should let them put "To become happy" in the yearbook and you know what?
It ocurred to me that I never even give a single ****
About what the other students might think or what their parents might think
Except for what my parents might think
But usually, they don't care as long as it's who I am and what I want
And I'm thankful for that

But I've always wondered
Why I never had one
Never thought of becoming anything
Now that I'm in my senior year which is a crucial part
Of my career orientation
And I'm scared so much
I'm scared that before
I wanted everything
Yet now I end up wanting nothing
And I wondered so much
On how I changed so gradually
From being a ball of blazing fire to a godforsaken blackhole
Though I know change is inevitable,
I didn’t expect to lose my heart in the process

Once, I've always dreamed to become a doctor
Because I wanted to heal scars and unspoken miseries and no
I'm not just after using scalpels or stethoscopes or syringes
Or cutting off people's brains
I wanted to fix the broken
Rip my being into shreds to keep them whole
I wanted sacrifice and salvation

And I've always dreamed to become a soldier
I don’t care how silly it sounds
I wanted to protect people and wanted to taste the bitterness
Of war and blood and death
I wanted to know death and see all the worst
And be exposed to them
That I wouldn't have any choice
But to be brave for myself and the others
Because death? It could be sweeter this way
To die for a cause, to die for somebody
I wanted sacrifice and salvation

And I've always dreamed to become a teacher
Beacuse I wanted to influence someone's life
Give them power to stand up for themselves
Watch a bud blossom into a beautiful flower
And then I would make thousands of memories
Because at the same time
I'm learning through connections and bonds and warmth
And that, would be one of the greatest things
I will cherish in my life forever
I wanted sacrifice and salvation

And then I aspired to be a lawyer,
To serve and give way to justice because that's all we have to know
And I realized defending a criminial would be unavoidable
And I've always sworn to myself
That if that happens, I'd rather burn myself to death
Because I should only send the right people in jail
Those people who deserve to rot in the cells and cling to metal bars
I wanted sacrifice and salvation

And I watched the conversation end
And feel my heart pound in my ears
And I cried so much that night
That I realized I seldom cry
Because I thought I was better
And I was terrified because
Nothing hurts more than not knowing
What you could actually want in this sad world
Because that means you might as well be nothing

A hollow
A ******* void
And I don't want to be like that
Nobody does
So i think and think and think
What do I actually want?

And the wind blew
Leaves fell onto the ground
People wheezed and laughed and breathed through their noses
And it slapped me in the face
I've never been stable in my life
I've concealed my greed up until now
I dreamed so much that I denied reality
Each day, making myself believe
That I wanted nothing but I actually
Wanted THE power to be everything

Be everything in a world I was bound to craft
I wanted to create moons and stars and storms and unicorns
And wars and tides that tell "Hey, humans can actually create worlds."
I wanted to be out of my control
I didn’t want to settle on a skin I was enclosed in, I was held captive by
So I changed whatever's written to
The paper I had submitted for the yearbook
And wrote "To be a Writer" and nothing else
This was supposed to be a slam poem but I don't have that talent to be so raw in front of an audience so I let the words scream at the paper instead. Hehe.
Madisen Kuhn Aug 2018
if you look up, you will see
the bright-eyed and
the wide-mouthed—
the interesting, the casual, the adored
glistening in the warm night
peered at through microscopes and
telescopes and stethoscopes
far and far away

we are so desperate to be close
close and close and
close enough to see the blemishes
the scarring and the peeling
effaced by obvious and biased inner-commentary
they’re just not as red or sore as mine
perhaps they were formed under
a different kind of sun

what does the unfamiliar heart say?
does it sound at all like mine?
will i ever escape the sloppy grasp of dullness?
will the world swallow me whole?
if i count the days on both hands
on toes, on eyelashes—
if i only eat green things and
read tattered books and
pretend that i don’t mind—will i ever
break the mirror?
will i find seven years of good luck
between the jagged edges?

to exist as a reflection
is to not exist at all
there are lonely, dark purple heavens
waiting for you to sever your longing gaze
to stop lying to yourself
to hop onto the back of the cow
and begin living somewhere beyond the moon—
to realize, with closed eyes
you belong to the sky
Chris Voss Mar 2011
This is not a love poem.
Because
I know nothing about the entrancement of Romance
It’s like watching a mime mimic antics
It makes me panic.
No, I write epics and tragedies.
About political catastrophes.
About the rhythmic anatomy of poetry.
Not about “How do I love thee…”
But let me count the ways that these days
Have grown strange;
The passage of time has seemed to stop.
This black clock’s bold Tock and
Tick have been erased and
I’m still sick with the aftertaste
From the venom of your kiss
Your toxic lips made me itch that
Poisoned twitch One-thousand times
Before my bloodshot eyes
Went blind to your beauty.
“A most unfortunate disability”
Professionals told me
But I just sighed and smiled insignificantly
“No, no, you see this,
Ironically, is immunity.”
Imperviousness to seduction

But this is not a love poem.
It’s a professional epiphany
An observation

All research and annotations state things like
Blind Fortunes and
Heart complications are just
Minor alterations that
Spark fascinations in
Lab coats and stethoscopes.
Isotopes of foreign hopes
Are my safety ropes to cope with my
Distance away from you another day
And there I go again.
Every ******* word I say will start out right
But then convey to betray me with the
Cliché decay
Of a fluttering heart.
And on this day when time has stopped
I’ll re-lock my jaw that dropped
And, with Blind Eyes, this mental case
Will try to trace the chalk outlines
Of  lucid days
With the white spine
Of the brain stem

But this
Is not
A love poem.
Because
I refuse to be Entranced by Romance.
I’m the kind of guy who would Panic in
That Frantic state of mind
And draw away from Sunlight
To find warmth Moonshine
To bite the bullet and lace up these shoes
Because eleven shots and twelve steps
Is the closest I get to refuge.
See, I dream in the Black and White
Of a first version television box set
About Bloodied tragedies
And political catastrophes
Set to a beat based on
The rhythmic anatomy of poetry
Rarely about “How do I love thee…”
Or the bedpost marks of
Fading, Chalk-Laced Memories.
C. Voss (2006)
mEb Jun 2010
All sounds lay dormant

Packed tight, no leaks

Dark stages none sing

Crowds of ears that still ring

Breathalyzers and torment

Parched throats

Contamination

Cold stethoscopes

Skin damnation

Pair of lungs that lost repetition

Rigid backbones with no support

Will not stand for any court

Needle ****** neck

Fluid builds unnoticed

A spinal tap not quite in focus.
death awaits
壱原侑子 Aug 2013
how do doctors live
with themselves after
putting stethoscopes
to people's chests
and not telling them
their hearts are beating
them to death?

i love you so
i tell you now
we're just history's
worst cases
of domestic violence
against ourselves
Zaira Diana Jun 2013
When I was little I said to myself that I wanted to be a teacher when I grow up. I remember how I used to play the teacher role and the pupil at the same time. Funny wasn’t it? Crazy. It’s just because I have no playmates then. I’m not an only child but my siblings were away from me. I never wanted to go out and play with other kids like me. I just wanted to be at home with my grandmother. I knew then that being there with her was the safest place. But I wasn’t a lonely kid. I always laugh, I sing, I dance, I wasn’t shy at all. I’m a very bright kid. Well, I know for sure, it’s because I am raised by a very bright woman too - my grandmother.

But there were those times when we’re always at the hospital. I saw her lying on the hospital bed and there were things attached to her. I was so clueless. And then there I saw some men and women dressed in white holding records, medicines with stethoscopes around their neck and some tiaras on their head (well, that’s what I thought then). I’ve always watched them every time they go to our room and check on my lola. They always smile at her. They’re like angels. I thought that they loved her very much because they have really taken care of her.

And so, in that moment I had a change of path. I thought, I don’t want to be a teacher anymore and that what I really want is to become a doctor. And yes! Without a doubt, it’s because of her. I know someday, I will be and I will take good care of her too like the angels in the hospital.
Yeah! Few more years from now. :)
You want to
Mend my heart;
With what? Staples?
It's more than
Ten sheets thick
I don't care
How industrial you go,
And I laugh
At your staple gun
And even your nail gun,
Put away the duct tape
It'll just slide right off,
Oh; I see,
You brought plenty
Of Krazy glue,
Are you kidding me?
You might as well
Use fly paper,
None of this will do,
No siree, Bob
You can't fix my heart
And you sure as hell
Can't build me a new one,
No one with a hardhat
Nor white coats or stethoscopes
Can undo what she broke,
Only she is the remedy
Only she is the cure,
And my local drugstore
Doesn't carry her
Not even in generic,
So as far as I can tell
I'm stuck with this malady
Most inconvenient tragedy...
APAD13 - 112 © okpoet
Fun fun times in the now and here and in no man's land between the lines where everything that's anything and no one who can be anyone or any one who can be everyone goes.

The weasel may be popped, but the shop's open the whole year through, fun fun things for us to do and who'd have thought that they only bought to keep up with the next door Jones.

Rags and bones and pony carts, Napoleons and Bonaparte's all come to them asylum men who in their white coats, stethoscopes at hand lead the madness of the marching and who'd have thought that they were mad, one and all of them asylum men.

Work they said will cure the blues, but I choose not to take advice, they look twice and shake their heads, Supermen in lockdown wards on lockdown beds with locked in minds find Lois with the golden hair, she's watching any someone over there and it happens to be me, what glee, one more Nero on the deck to fiddle things, in my neck of the woods, goods in, goods out and that's what madness is about, absolutely pointless drivel dribbled by the 14th Earl of anywhere she's just a girl, not allowed the umpire shouts, not PC get out of here and in no man's land the band lays down, Napoleon marches on one more town, Havisham sits in her wedding gown and dust gathers in the corridors.
It's Wednesday and a workday,  sanity is in short supply and insanity is a bit like being inAsda or inHarrods.. or so they say.
Mara Jan 2015
Good luck trying to "save me"
Because to you all I do is self destruct and **** everything
In your eyes, I need help from people with Ph.D.'s  
I need to be stuffed with pills, take EEG scans
Violated with stethoscopes and serotonin shots
"I'll fix you, I promise"
Smile at me like a scientist does to it's experiment
Make me feel like I'm the guilty one when you hold my hand
As I sit down for these doctors and tell them when it starts to hurt
I should've started screaming a long time ago
I can no longer remember when I first felt all this pain
When was the last time I told someone how I felt that wasn't paid by someone else?
Those blue pills have been given to me by those
Angels in stethoscopes.
The dying will stop, so I’m told.
Your soul will be able to hide now.
I smile at the thought of this blackness
Being ripped from my innards.
A hard night of drinking will
Do well enough, now.
I ***** out my soul.

Every few months I am your play thing, my angel,
My savior in your white coat.
Milligrams increase as I stare up at the hazel
Sky. I ***** out my soul once more.

I am your baby, now. I rely on you not for life,
But rather, not to die.
Cradle me, kiss me on the forehead,
Say it will all be alright.

Die, sweetie, die!
Die, your *******!
You venom, seeping through my veins,
Die and come back to life and Die.
This blackness; I need you.

My angel, with his shiny new armor,
Loves me with no remorse.
He’s told me as so.
Let’s put more heaven into you,
He says.

This is love.
This is an experiment
designed to put us out of
our misery and what 'this' is
is hard to tell, to explain it,
well
we could try.

The lab coats with the stethoscopes and
the things that bleep when we go to sleep.

The digital thermometer that measures,
(haha) asif
the temperature.

OCD is just the way I do and
the things I see,
CDO is better though.

The hypodermic terminal
the point at the end of
a fine needle,
they stick it in and
pull the pin
boom, back to the
operations room.
Terry Collett May 2015
Nima's not
in the mood
for the quacks

visiting
the mental
cases ward

coming round
in white coats
stethoscopes

and closed minds
she's outside
in the sun

that despite
the nurse’s
wanting her

on the ward
not outside
chain smoking

a doctor
with a nurse’s
comes outside

the doctor
not happy
you should be

on the ward
for our rounds
not out here

the quack said
Nima sits
on a seat

her legs crossed
the night dress
with no belt

reveals sight
of her thighs
and she smiles

at the spark
alive there
in his eyes.
GIRL, HOSPITAL, MOOD, WARD, 1967
standard tunes on the radio
the gramophones are outdated
so dust off your duvet covers
and dance naked for the daily
words are kept frozen in ice cube trays
spray my hands with cinnamon and honey
your rose water sprinkles my nose
and i feel a hundred years
younger than that old toad
sweep out the dining rooms
and follow the relics of the mind
in my time of loving
i will find a way to say i’m sorry
you combine memory with meaning
like stethoscopes trying to cope
with our swollen diameters
growing up is all about coming to terms
with our petty personalities and demeanor
nootropes in the new tropics
some are similar to the old radishes
codes and secret handshakes
shape the lakeside attractions
of parks and fairgrounds
as the storm rages beneath our stereos
share24 Feb 2020
Creatures gather in the courtyard at sundown
Armed with stethoscopes and pills

The infirm clad in a costume gown
Laid bare among the land without hills

Guided only by the melodies
Of the beast with the blinking eyes
And piercing tones

Healing begins
Written during my second stem cell transplant in June 2019. Doctors and nurses scrambled through the hallways. The IV machines beeping nonstop. But, that's where healing began.
Laurel LaChance Sep 2018
I'm from bruises
From fear and anger.
I'm from the backs of her hands
That I thought I deserved.
I'm from a life no child warrants.

I'm from tattered clothing
From malnutrition and neglect.
I'm from a heart
Ripped at every edge
Frayed at every seam.

I'm from "put up or shut up"
Where children are neither
Meant to be seen nor heard.

Memories held together by
The binding of a notebook.
I'm not from there,
At least not anymore.

Now I'm from stethoscopes,
From scrubs and white shoes.
I'm from the first breath of a newborn baby
To the last breath of a dying lady.

I'm from EKG lines that continue
To pulsate with each contraction
Of a bruised and battered heart no more.

I'm from a world where I'm not judged
By where I'm from
But where I've gone
And what I've become.

— The End —