amnesia

In my psyche
that rotten hollow
within my soul
beyond her grasp
the torrent lies in wait.

Ask me once my dear
if you can see
the horror hidden
behind these orbs of deception.

Ask me again:
the words falling
from your lips
as digits upon the piano's keys
and I will deceive
my own beating heart.

I see them
carry in our dead,
the son's and fathers
of my generation
of war.

Yet my core shivers
at the many wounded
and dead
of mind
who will fill our offices
in need of some pharmacologic
elixir
of amnesia.

Our dead may forget
the pain and sadness,
yet our healers will
remember
all that ails and
aches in their minds
for eternity.

aphasia

A vault of space
occupied by the amorphous solid
of thought
and movement.

A single instant:
a subtle rupture
or absence
of flow.

The droop
of lips and lids;
a metamorphosis
in your space.

Locked now
with frustration
and misunderstanding
in your loquacious world.

A wasting hemisphere
of hallowed thoughts
lost now
in space.

morning rounds

Each morning
I travel the long white hall
to the corner room
where you sleep.

Each morning
I disturb your subtle moment
of peace
with my clinical barrage.

Each morning
I pray as I walk that hall
as I take that final step into your room
that a different face will greet me.

Each morning
I hope that life has returned
to your smile
and that my medicine has healed.

Yet, each morning
my heart breaks
as I gather my clinical data
at your bedside
and you sleep again until tomorrow
morning.

the pastors son

I fear each day at your bedside
that when I look into the brown of your eyes
I will only see death;
the flicker of life
will have somehow left you
beyond the control of prayer or passion.