The Maintenance Of Bodies Poem by JAE JAE

there is so much involved in the maintenance of bodies...
the greasy hospital sheets,
doctors on switch-shifts
mortgaging their own happy hours,
cold and endless bathroom steel
and the carving-out feeling
of surgical howls,
the basement below filled with
blackened limbs.

then there is
the ripping, tearing, bloodiness
of newborn pain—
a welcome shot of reality when
that needle bangs and clatters to the floor...
I could revel all night in the irony of
incompetence.

so much done to save as much surface area
of skin
as possible,
to reduce the scars
and poultice the bleeding
hearts and minds and soft, soft feeling of
defeat, so many

words left
dripping off the railings that are holding me in this bed,
so much work slung at
trying to survive
the wounds,
the wailings of a scared, blonde-haired little girl,
eyes reddened and blood-streams pouring over her eyes,
just calling out,
just crawling in—

so much time and energy involved
in the maintenace of bodies,
it makes us sick.