poem

Lookout

We passed the carrion, the mangled deer, 

On the side of a bend in the road

That wended its way up the hill

To a lookout I wanted the kids to see.

Ooooooooooooooooo, they scream,

daddy gross it smells roll up the window!

The rank gamy invasiveness of odor.

I wanted them to see the valley stretching out below

The mist enshrouded trees

The generational timelessness of 

All that falls below,

All the unnavigable naturalness

They'll never probably go.

But don’t stand too close to the edges.

Goddammit what did I say!

kids

You don’t know enough of 

the buzzed moss or
blotched whitened lichens,

the blood against rock

in the noonday sun,

the slippery humors
that ooze from the 

dead along the way

8/2/19

Poem

Hollow

This is the way it all will end

Not with a whimper

Nor guarded whisper

But a boom clang

Pan to the floor crash rattle

Blast a hole in the drywall

Ball through the glass bang

Everything smashed

While only on the inside

Do the walls crumble

Without a sound down

And I'm standing in rubble 

While I sweep

The shards of glass 

Poised to pierce

the unprepared hide

On the outside

7/21/19

poemm

Optimism

Glass half full

Sipping wine by the pale glow

Of a half moon.

Those were the good old times

Full circle quarters and silver dimes

Change for a tip

It’s all we had left

Heads or tails,

Stay or go,

Anyone could love you 

In that sliver of bursting June moon;

Visage radiant,

Freckles like browned pebbles 

In the bed of a winding stream

Flashing in the tree refracted moonlight

Half past four, happy hour slow

But I am the one

You’ll loathe and love

I am the one to praise and damn,

Make your stomach clench 

Drive you insane

Make everything fall into place

But I am also

the one who writes for you

who will find the words as I

wander through the rain,

in the gray contused dawn,

Unsuspecting soul,

your face heavier and drawn.

trudging off to market:

milk for the kids

low on detergent

(it's raining again

it's raining again)

I see you as before 

I see you as when

I see you as next then

fully realized

you seem surprised
to see me now

Half way home,

Half happy, half pleasured;

Paradoxes of Zeno

It always feels like a full fledged pain.

I pour myself and I pour myself

But there’s a hole in the bottom;

A heart always half empty
reserved for all that's to come

7/21/19

Poem

Fear

I saw you post that quote 

On your Facebook page

(Inspirational lavender paisley background,

Slanted challenging italics)

You’re free to enhance the font

But the other side of fear 

Isn’t always what you want.

There are sharks circling in those dark waters.

Better to remain in the boat

It isn’t enough to peg everything on hope.

Just stay right here

Bide your time and wait

I know I'm just talking to myself.

You’ve already dived in and

are swimming for shore.

The fins are closing fast,

I can’t look.

7/16/19

Poem

Lone Flower

You were a flower of ravishing beauty

colors of kaleidoscopic complexity

shimmering, shadowed, sun-splashed

and there you were----- suddenly, 

standing in the middle of my path

I was halfway home

back bent beneath the

weight of time and duty,

portents of resignation

just around the next bend.

My heart was heavy

and my hands were full

and there you were;

defiant, singular, untrammeled

as if you’d chosen that spot 

to bloom for me alone

I stopped and reached for you

(Of course) 

They say the one true flower

blooms but one time

for one man

and so I had to stop for you 

that one time

in that one place

and reach for you 

rising from that dusty path.

I damaged a few petals

(in the process)

that fell to the dusty road.

I even bent your stem

and I am so sorry.

I should have known better,

I am so very sorry.

But you will bloom again

I know that you will bloom again 

The best that can be said 

is that I didn't try to steal your heart,

rip you roots and all

from the earth

to press between the pages 

of this old dusty book.

I had sense enough to only touch,

that one time, in that one place

which was the wrong time 

and the wrong road-----

But it couldn’t be helped.

For this flower was meant for me!

If only for one day

along a well trod path

that will never be the same.

I don’t know anything about flowers;

can’t tell a dahlia from a daffodil

from a bleeding heart from an orchid

from a longing from a loving

but this is the thing I know

as sure as a smile when

caught in a summer shower.

My solace is a place

outside of time

beyond the edges of maps.

Here is a field of flowers

swaying in the wind,

straining to receive the sun’s rays.

I will find you there

in the chapter I have written,

when my loads are lighter

when my work is done,

my little flower,

the hundreds of ways of you

all together as one

and the summer wind

and the sun and the stars and the moon

waiting there in this hidden meadow

my ever blooming you.

7/16/19

Poem

Pond

Early morning placid sheen

Of an ovoid pond,

shimmery silver steel,

a reflective pool

in the already hot sun.

It’s lovely and all

but I’m always worried about the depth.

What lurks beneath?

How far would I sink

If I held my breath?

Could I touch the bottom?

Would I find only darkness

And lose all orientation?

No one can walk across water

And I wouldn't try, not even in winter;

the cold is no salvation.

You can’t trust the ice 

To bear the loads I carry

7/13/19

Poem

Of You

Dear love

dear you

my love.

dear my undying unfounded

devoted you,

my you.

I miss you a lot and I am thinking of you

all of the time

I am thinking of you all the time

all the time I am thinking of you

I am thinking as I am thinking of you

all of

the time.

I am thinking

and I am thinking
and thinking

of you

all of the one I am thinking of

you

I am.

I am thinking

not all of the time

not all of the you

not all

of the you

not all

of

the time

I am not thinking.  

of you

this time

6/14/19

ACS surgery thread reply

ACS Surgery Discussion Forum regarding recent AMA statement on health care as a human right.  The objectivism trolls had hijacked the thread.  This was my poorly received response:


Dear Dr X(and those of similar vein)-


I must respond to your impassioned excoriation of the idea that healthcare is a "human right" (scare quotes rendered as a show of respect to you) in the name of the dignity of surgeon labor.


Your initial salvo is an interesting mashup/admixture of both the Declaration of Independence (We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness) with the US Constitution (i.e. 5th and 14th Amendments prohibiting deprivation of property without due process).  Your inclusion of "property" (my scare quotes, my turn) is interesting, to say the least. Similar arguments were made in the infamous Lochner vs New York case of 1905 that upheld the "right" of a bakery to violate employment laws that limited the number of hours a baker could work in a week, under the auspices of honoring the sacredness of the contract.  Similar arguments were made, most infamously, and perhaps more familiarly, in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, using the same due process, right to property arguments. Dred Scott was merely the "possession" of John Emerson (an army surgeon, imagine that!) and therefore had no recourse to the noble, high fidelity rhetoric contained within the holy writ of the US constitution.  John C Calhoun made similar arguments during the nullification debates decades earlier.


But let's not spend too much time nosing around in Supreme Court history.  Your argument mounts an army of straw men to fight a battle you will never see.  No one is dragging Dr X out of bed at 7 am to operate all day long on an endless list of self pay patients.  No one is mandating uncompensated labor. This has never happened in your life. And if it has (bad call draw, bad weekend ER luck) then universal healthcare would have made such future events impossible.  Which begs the question: what is it you are going on about again? What is your point? Universal health care would guarantee that you are compensated for every operation you do. Do you just not like the idea of people getting "free care"?  Do you turn away Medicare patients? Did you know that most people on Medicaid work? Your diatribe about free care and uncompensated physician labor only seems applicable to the current status quo, i.e when self pay patients show up with appendicitis.   A world of universal health care would obviate the existential pain you seem to be suffering from regarding the dignity of physician labor. Your gnawing angst about a future world of…...too many patients being covered by insurance seems to be..….at odds with what you originally purport to fear. As someone said earlier in this thread, 50% of healthcare is provided by that horrible, totalitarian "government" you demonize.  Ask recipients of medicare, of VA benefits, of Tricare how they feel about the care they receive. You may receive a higher reimbursement from private insurance but that's only after the population at large has had their paychecks and wallets picked over by marauding bands of parasitical insurance companies and third party administrators.


Yuval Harari has a fascinating new book out called Sapiens, a historical review of our human species.  One of his themes is this idea of there being "imaginary orders" that humans collectively agree upon. Think of all organized religion, the divine mandate of kings, feudalism, master/slave relationships, race hierarchies, and then, post Enlightenment, the idea of individual human rights and government of the people and by the people.  None of these ideas has any basis in empirical or mathematical reality. They are all necessary figments of the human imagination that we have at one time or another collectively internalized as truth. Thus, there is order and structure to our lives at certain points in history. The ideas derive their power not from some transcendent unassailable Truth but simply from the collective societal decision to assent to their tenets.


The point of this little digression is to say that imaginary orders, in general, are somewhat arbitrary and can be altered as time passes and circumstances of human existence change.  Human rights in the era of authoritarian monarchy, nascent democracy, and mercantilist empire were thought to include, at the very least, a guarantee toward life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  But that doesn't mean Thomas Jefferson stumbled upon some sort of special theory of relativity of political philosophy. In the context of his time, his writings rang true (and still do for the most part).  But that doesn't mean he had the ability to foresee the eternal unfolding of human history. Further, we do ourselves no favors by limiting our views on human rights to those of an 18th century American slave owner.  I have a more expansionary perspective on what ought to be deemed necessary and proper to all living souls. Human rights is a living, evolutionary concept.


In the context of a  21st century America, an America that is unquestionably the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the history of nation states, a nation that spends more on its military exploits every year than the next 10 countries combined,  where millions of men and women avoid basic health care due to high deductible private plans or go uninsured entirely, where medical bills represent the number one etiology of personal bankruptcy, where life expectancy has fallen vs the rest of the world, where the USA alone among advanced democracies remains the one nation that does not guarantee universal health care, in this particular context, I aver that health care belongs in the pantheon of human rights.


This is my imaginary order.  For what is liberty if you are afraid to take a new job or start a new business for fear of losing your employer based health care plan?  What is the pursuit of happiness without having the right to obtain the medicine and care needed to mitigate illness and pain? What is the right to life without having the ability to afford the necessary measures to amplify, maintain and heal the body in which you reside?


Too much of this thread is dominated by a juvenile Ayn Randian rhetoric that treats the modern world of resources in purely zero sum terms.  As if provision of food necessitates breaking into Dr Leonard's pantry in the middle of the night or armed bandits raiding the neighborhood grocery store.  (How about simply paying the populace----in the era of 3% unemployment--- a living wage so they can afford to buy their own groceries.) As if doctors are remanded by state police and forced to perform procedures on the unworthy, the lazy, unentitled. (How about instead legislating universal care, whether in the form of single payer or one of the hybrid systems used by Germany, France et al) This world of abundance and wealth is both a blessing and a curse.  Our lives are enriched and made comfortable by its spoils but it is also the dark mirror that reflects our basest, most selfish instincts.


I would urge many of you to break out of your cloistered intellectual dead ends.  Put down the Atlas Shrugged. Read about alternative solutions. Expand your minds.  Your hearts will follow.