The Last Supper Of The Radiologists Poem by Jean Bernard Parr

They were twelve, and right there
the tall thin one, back to the window
in black- Judas or was it the Nazarene?
all wore security tags, for radiation,
for chains of office
tall and thin in serious suit
a head down lip-biter
eyes boring into ghostly under table glow
almost as if there was God or the other
fellow hiding there, hissing, shush
don't give us away, we don't want to be
at this fucking meeting either
he could have been a contender
the tall thin one in serious suit

I recall the light came down slanting
when they all trooped in, a careful and careless
pecking order, you could sense the monkey fist knot
of fealty at the tables' end where Miss Control
was pulling her strings
he could have been a contender
the tall thin one in serious suit

You got better here or didn't
one late came in backing through swing doors
like a birthing
there was applause, and his untucked shirt
signalled a boy among all these clinicians,
a boy amongst middle managers and deranged
polystyrene cups exists somewhere in a drawer
in a tin, a celluloid curl of a tree climbing boy

the canteen ladies they dole it out,
the lugubrious beans and Jurassic sausages
with meteoroid of stuffing
I am grateful for the last supper
I sit here reading New Scientist
specifically 'What is Thought? '
the light slices down as they come in
They are twelve, exactly twelve,
and their radiation badges make it clear
there is one with bunched black hair, tied back neat
Judas Iscariot and Jesus are the same person...
I saw it right there, like cable intertwined
just as Stephen Hawkin and James Hartle married
quantum mechanics with general relativity
'When a particle travels from A to B
it doesn't take a simple path, but passes
along two or more paths simultaneously,
interfering with itself at the other end,
as if it was a wave'

As if it were a wave.