A Doctor's Religion Poem by Daniel Y.
A Doctor's Religion
Surgery, GO!
Cut open chest with a vertical slit;
and two diagonals to peel a fleshy collar.
The red smell of blood becomes routine
like toast with butter. Under the knife, days melt away.
Slice and staple every bit.
Charge them every dollar.
Come in. Get drugs. Go out. Pay up.
Sorry, what was your name?
He often forgets to ask.
A doctor’s spirit is in his bones.
Hard facts won by blood and marrow.
Caging all his guts and glory.
Worshipping the perfect body.
But it seems he was born an adult,
with whole chapters of his life ripped out.
The quarter of a life spent by most
is spent by him in working post’.
His other half allayed to nights.
Years of self-dissection have left a broken man.
Flashbacks of surgeries that felt like Vietnam.
Left alone without a hand, a prosthetic deep in mind.
A jigsaw with missing pieces trying to make things bind.
A piece of paper confirms his prestige,
when the childless parent publishes expertise.
And slowly he succumbs to his own disease,
on the threshold of despair.
Does the paycheck god reign supreme?
When that strip of paper knows your name,
the zerozerozeroes will hypnotize.
But fortunes cast on screens and in charts,
cannot tell the fate of hearts.
A half-transplant left a hole in his chest.
What is his star-crossed fate? He doesn’t care to know.
It’s just a pump, with a rhythmic beat,
Nitrous oxide in a mask
is the only way he laughs.
I cannot feel a beautiful view.
I can see it through a window, but it remains untouchable. A sieve.
And my expensive vacations cannot heal the hole.
I’m running out of bandaids.
I want to start over.
Now, cough up the cash.
Standing on the top rung is a good way to break your neck.
While your child is funneled into your shadow,
and you bathe in the sun.
You ask why you get blastoma
Will your postmortem say Ph.D.?
I don't doubt the professionalism of this doctor but I doubt his ethics. But wait don't those two things come together in the Hypocratic Oath? Absolutely. What has blinded this doctor to the higher values of knowledge, skill, compassion, prestige, commitment to others, good humor - all of which should be unified in the doctor's outlook, or (say it!) religion. Instead he has become isolated because of those achievements, and he finds himself tottering on a ladder of material success which goes - nowhere - which sums up the course of his life. I would like to refer this doctor to the doctor in Shakespeare's MACBETH, V,1 & 3. a humble and wise man among men.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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5/6/2024 12:00:14 AM # 1.0.0.1119
Daniel, Your style of writing is very introspective, and it punches in the nose at the end. I like that format. I write in the same manner. Pedestrian readers sometimes wonder why poems don't rhyme, and my answer is always the same. Humpty Dumpty rhymes-that isn't what this is! You dig deeply into your subject matter and tell the story from the inside out. You are quite an interesting writer with a different professional drumbeat to which you march. Keep up your standards. they are quite worthy.