Physician Heal Thyself

The NHS, now its own A&E Dept Casualty,

Lay on a trolley haemorrhaging resources

Banknotes for sticking plasters peeling away

Into bloodthirsty hands

Hands looking out a slice of liver here

Or there a desirous delicacy, plucked fingers

Palming a payroll impudent predators

For gain rip out

Guts and preparing piping, devilled luncheons

Griddled

They pass around the fare amongst themselves

Limpet-like parasitic creatures on a night

Stalking the wards like feral canibals

Scouring for monies, which count above what others

Foregoing miss unheeded

Here is an ailing woman patiently

Suffering evils – her business; no-one elses

Contented to abide all nagging sore discomforts,

Contending in her pain with spirit graciously

Here is a bended man whose sickness lingers

Having made his bed and kept him company

Shamed and diminished by such strong constancy

Let these drabs be

Drawers of funds from off repute and hospitality

Consideration, treatment, oaths aloud,

Who with slave ungenerous sense of injury

Fish pots of cash

Stashes of meagre tarnished silver pence in hand

Set up above a common, human, need

Ahead any thought of comfortable consideration

Clink! joy is to hand!

How might a house divided stand against itself

Its own destructive power destroying in the land

This preying on one another lawfully; who withstands

It? No man

Or woman, or child, or family might remand

This drift; together only might might stem the flow.

This stand comes from one’s heart or otherwise we’re empted

Iniquity undermines.

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You can also find this poem at our metanomalies blog: http://metanomalies.com/physician-heal-thyself/

Including my linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/physician-heal-thyself-matthew-raymer-1