Macky and Me

Unimaginable, unendurable,
everlasting, iatrogenic boredom.
Time himself lies comatose
in a bed identical to mine.

I've been in the hospital a week.
This is a true story
about the flesh-and-blood me, a.k.a I,
barely even a poem.

They do, you know what they do,
IVs, blood-oxies, hypos, tubes, BPs all hours.
At night an LNA comes with some pills
in a pleated paper cup,

none of them mind-altering.
One day they tell me
they're going to inject me with a mild anesthetic
for something they have a mind to do,

the kind that leaves you conscious
of new surroundings, deep silence
deep inside you, warmth,
water lillies, flowing away

to a pleasant iatrogenic staycation.
I smile my understaning
Why did they wait so long?
Finally! Yesssssss! Go for it.!

Just as the needle descends on a diagonal
the one in charge glances at the monitor.
She shakes her head. She has changed her mind.
"He's getting better,

we don't need to do this."
	Wha??
They gather up their stuff
	Hello?
and leave me where I always am
	No way!
back in bed in bordom's arms.
	Shit!

		* * *

Just as the hangman
is tightening the the noose
and Mack the Knife
is taking a deep last breath,

Queen Victoria's envoy
gallops on stage
waving for all to see
 Her Majesty's pardon. Wha??

Macky cries in ecstasy
"I knew it! I knew it!"
returning to his beloved life of crime,
as the curtain draws to a close.