Sunday, November 16, 2008

Revision: Emergency

Writing is easy. The discipline is in the revision. I recently workshopped an old poem at a newly revived Writer's group, so here's a second draft.
-
Emergency

Here the sound comes first
siren or scream, moaning or sobbing,
calling us from our stupor,
winding our way to the trauma bay

where the smell hits like a fist,
gunpowder and soot
stale urine, halitosis
even the sting of disinfectant

wiping the records board,
the highest blood alcohol
won by a teenager status post mosh pit
in the gurney next to another winner

a man who came in only after the batteries died.
I lay hands on the longest object
extracted from a rectum and want to yell
(I got seven inches, anyone beat a seven?)

The taste lingers all the way to the bathroom
where I spit up disgust and pleasure,
that adrenaline that drives me,
like these people, to come back again.

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