the calling of listening

The feeling today,
a dreary summer shower,
tickling my window
with drops from Jupiter.

I ponder in the morning haze,
how things can go awry
become broken
beyond repair,
a permanent schizm.

So in hearing your words
of heart break - sorrow,
and now shear sickness
in the loss
of sense and purpose.

Knowing that I sit,
in this seat
to listen once again,
to sit with the pain
and empathize with agony,
brings a pure solace;
of knowing my place
in this hierarchy
and of the calling
of listening and healing.

impotence of illness

A chapter of life closes,
the rite of passage
thousands have endured
in frightening sleepless nights
among the houses of Gods.

A bittersweet finale
as my mind and heart
continue to try and comprehend
the last five years of suffering.

Oh' the anxiety of a virginal clinician,
and the struggle of an artist
of the healing arts,
to accept the defeat of death
and the impotence of illness.

fixed and dilated

We gather today
for a teachable moment:
a bedside skill rehearsal,
the "cold calorics"
a demon-ic-strated tool
for a final decision.

One could never sense
the pain and suffering
that would be cast over
this moment:
the making of another
diagnosis.

Holding back your lids
I watch intently
as the cold slurry
is sent awash
deep into the canal
an attempt to tickle
the most basic of
human
reflexes-spinal-carnal.

And in a moment,
I see the students,
in pairs:
the one's intent on the
'skill'
watching the master
hoping for an ounce of "see one" -
and the others
disgusted
at another therapeutic maneuver
of human indignity.

My mind
now tormented
sitting idle,
for all I can see
are your pupils,
fixed and dilated
staring towards the heavens,
reaching forth beyond words
screaming for a somber
release
from the captivity
of a broken body.

My horror
now magnified
as we "elicit"
the necessary stimulation,
to define
death
as it howls
in banal clarity.

'L" Taravell

The beast shutters in the darkness,
as we course outbound
away from the salt licked shores
of the bay.

You slip into position
the seat providing solace
I suppose,
from the concrete
and the cold.

I view you now
through my trained lens:
diagnosing the seborrhea
and the burgeoning alopecia
for in my other speak -
"appears older than stated age."

The stains grow deep
into your weathered surface
yet what draws me closer
are the blackness,
the decay
of the finger tips.

Digits the tinge of midnight,
in the heart of a March eve,
for my mind runs the differential
of your sadness
and your madness.

I wager the stain
grew in the cold nights
when numbers #1-3
crept out of an encased sleeve
into the numbing crisp air.

I wonder of these digits
black from an acrid burning
an escape into a moment
of synthetic bliss.

Yet, the diagnostic lens
worries of organic poisons coursing
through your veins;
a heart and its chambers
a permanent home to your
impending death.

Your eyes close now
in a moment of rest
or escape
or transcendence;
allow me to sit and worry
for a moment
about the differential
of your demise
on an outbound train.