Autumn Visit to the Doctor's Office

d-pend (73)in #poetry • 6 years ago (edited)

Autumn Visit
to the Doctor's Office

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original poetry by @d-pend
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_{Photos by schnotte and szorny-stock}

virginia_creeper_by_szorny_stock-d82wvsz 3.jpg

Dread pathology in a meadow of beige
where antiquated theories languish
on magazine covers exuding cheer.

Sterile membranes
to counteract life's grit,
misery quantified,
morbid with the accretions of dream
under gauche carpeting.

In the corner,
a blinding centipede of tin
insulates from effervescence
and slinks into the ceiling.

To usher in autumn,
canvasses of sunlit leaves' decline,
a timid escape
from years of death-by-analysis.

(Grinning while they pilfer
ruby aquifers with uneasy joy.)

Lights hung with cold grace,
conical crowns pantomiming relevance,
smile thinly upon mortality—
and laugh behind my back.

virginia_creeper_by_szorny_stock-d82wvsz 2.jpg

5e8aae02ec5b8ab633e31cc6742a00cb-d4qy498 4.jpg

Poetry by
@d-pend
9/5/18
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Photos by

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   I. "Dr. Stein" by schnotte [cropped]
   II. "5k" by schnotte [edited, flipped]
   III. "Virginia Creeper" by szorny-stock [edited]

5e8aae02ec5b8ab633e31cc6742a00cb-d4qy498 3.jpg

#writing #health #poem #busy

6 years ago in #poetry by d-pend (73)

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zeleiracordero (67) 6 years ago

The encounter with the images recreated by the artist Schnotte, reproduces an echo in the memory of the voice that indicates the moments when he goes to an annual medical check-up, not pleasant, always in autumn, a season that, in itself, brings nostalgia confrontation image-echo produced a trip in time, according to which it was necessary to draw blood to analyze it, as a medical routine, too stressful (for the child, now adult) for all the ritual involved in getting it, all the fear, that still persists, to the needles; the created situations that marked an indelible pattern in the psyche. The images stored in the memory make the memory more painful as a form of expression of the discontent and affrontion suffered year after year, each autumn, which now reminds him with the color of its leaves, the color of the blood extracted during the old medical treatment, which as a routine suffered.

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hlezama (67) 6 years ago (edited)

This is the most curious description i've read of blood taking.

Grinning while they pilfer
ruby aquifers with uneasy joy.

Doctor's visit must be anyone's most dreadful appointments. On the one hand there is the need that may take us there to look for some particular release (pain or just the mortification of the possibility of an illness not yet diagnosed).
On the other hand, there is the fear of being auscultated improperly or unprofessionaly (in Venezuela, at least, doctors serve interests other than the patients'). My wife was forced to spend an outrageous amount of money (which we did not have and had to borrow) on two tests to get a diagnosis that might have been reached at without any of those tests.

The poem certainly paints a dreadful picture of medicine and its alleged contribution ot humanity.
Dread, antiquated, languish, morbid, gauche, death-by-analysis, cold, pantomiming.

Whether it ultimately "laugh behind [our] back[s]" is up to discussion, but there have been quite a few scandals that have put into question the morality of the medical sciences.

The portrait is very acurate, though, if you come to any Venezuelan hospital. You do get the feeling here that the doctor's office, or the hall, where most likely you'll be taken care of, is a stage where an absurd play is being put on and you are a guest star.

I appologize in advance if the images are too offensive (I'll remove them if that's the case).

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d-pend (73) 6 years ago

I have a rather scathing view on the efficacy of Western medicine (suppose it wasn’t too hard to tell!) at least where matters of chronic ailments are concerned. With emergency care they do brilliantly, and shine dealing with methods that ought to be the last resort: highly toxic medications and invasive surgical operations.

Moreover (though I didn’t consciously allude to it in this piece) there is the troubling matter you mentioned, medicine as business. Patients begin to be seen as customers from which as much money as possible ought to be extracted. Love, unfortunately, too often exits the equation.

The pictures don’t bother me; I appreciate you sharing about the unfortunate situation in Venezuela. My heart is extended to you, my friend.

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hlezama (67) 6 years ago

Thanks, @d-pend. I appreciate it.
I agree with you regarding efficacy of Western medicine regarding chronic diseases. It has always been puzzling to be that with so many advances we still have cancer and other chronic illness killing people.
There is always the possibility of pharmaceutica companies stepping on the breaks of breakthroughs if that means their stopping selling their drugs.
In venezuela we had a brilliant doctor/scientist, Jacinto Convict, who recently died (age 100). Convict was the brain behind the leprocy vaccine (ironically his name is not mentioned in many sites describing the disease). Before he died he had allegedly stated that he and his collaborators at the Venezuela's National Institute of Biomedicine had found vaccines for some types of cancer. Recently there was a great deal of confusion after it was reported on a newspaper that Covit's vaccine against cancer was not only ready but available. The info was then denied by the Venezuela's National Institute of Biomedicine.
One can't help but wonder...