Self-Portrait in a Hospital Room
I am patient to be the white room. I count
the ticks of the clock in the corner
and try to go without breathing
for longer and longer. I wear
my drab green gown and listen
to the insincerities of the nurses.
They let me be speechless as they dress
and undress me. They remove and replace
my bedpan with a trained efficiency,
and an equally trained lack of
expression. Every other evening I am slid
into a bathtub like a six-foot baby.
A nurse suds my stitches and lets
the warm water and meaningless
chatter run. After three weeks
of morphine sleep a young doctor
chewing gum says the hospital
is legally required to switch
my medication. Twenty one days
of constant opioids is enough to form
a habit. The doctor smiles as he calls me
sport. At least the sensation is returning
to my fingers. As the pallet beneath me
feels thinner and thinner I am brought
brushes and paint. For three days
I lay in my hospital bed, with-
drawing. I make a few red cross
hatches, but otherwise leave the pages
blank. A perfect self-depiction,
as easy as swallowing medicine.
Addictions Never End, They Are Merely Substituted With Others
since a thimbleful of tar can send me to god
what else can you offer.
i want gestures in the shape of strange birds.
i want a dictionary of extinct colors.
i count the clocks in the hours.
i hear the frayed wires in the city voices.
fix me with slower chemicals.
be another way to god.
praise a polyphony of distractions.
play new music to my withdrawn attention.
calm my movements with shared cigarettes
and the repetition of your hushes.
pretend sex will be enough
to replace my diminished dopamine.
arrange your limbs before my red windows.
watch me remove your stolen silks.
i will let you rest in the finished lights.
then use my insomnia as an excuse.
while you pull my lies up to your chin and sleep
i will walk through the sound of pale rooms
rustling their skins over the ambulance roads
to a guarded house whose door opens at my nod,
where for thirty dollars i am given hours
of the only consecration i have ever known.
Michael Battisto has work that can be found or forthcoming in HAD, Cypress Poetry, The Shore, Josephine Quarterly, MoonPark Review, Frogpond, and elsewhere. He has lived in many places, but now he lives in Oakland. You can find him on Twitter @mbattisto3 or @michaelbattisto.com.
Photo by gorden murah surabaya from Pexels