Young Writers Society

22.

Rotation

a spin around the country
what's a hundred miles between friends?

Or landlords?

six full moons in a different city,
three on the other side of smoke

Excuses

are thicker than water,
you're young, your wallet is full

Apologise

just because you learnt your trade
in a red-brick city doesn't mean you should hope to stay there forever

and they need you on the bogs,
and in the dairies

after all, it's a

Vocation

aren't you going to make some sacrifices?
it's only half a year - I've never lived there
but I hear there's some nice walks in the area.

23.

this day last year,
fists clenched to hide the trembling,
two suits smiled in my direction.

today,
I led a lamb to the slaughter.
I laughed, in an office I call my own,
about a time when that was us.

here we now stand:
still bone tired, still
waiting on the next good thing
the world always seems brighter
one rung up the ladder

but I am so proud
of that day last year and I am so proud
of each person I guided today

I led them into a room
and they left that room a doctor

yes
there is magic
even here.

24.

O negative blood
A nervous anaesthetist

Suit clad senior nurse,
A porter running every direction

These are the flurries of activity
That wake you up, keep you alive
You can hear it in the scientist on call's voice,
Their heart thumps down the telephone
As you ask for three more units of O neg

And then it ends and all there is
Is the memory shivering on your skin
Of how pale she looked,
How scared,

And when she is taken elsewhere - to
ICU, to theatre
All you have left to do is pray she sees the morning

25.

Telemetry:
as you sleep
and eat
anger,
daydream,
the electric stalks taped to your ribs

Tell a nurse
elsewhere
Every movement of your heart
Every jolt and dip,
She watches
your life
Pump
Beat

Tick down the minutes

26.

I met a man with the saddest eyes in the world.
Ink black, huge, glistening, sunken in sun-wrinkled skin
hidden under a weighed-down brow.

His pancreas is unhappy with him.
I glanced at the surgical registrar on call -
My tutor throughout training who taught me:
The pancreas is the jealous wife
Of immigrant men
Who are having an affair with the bottle.

He just shook his head.

"It's autoimmune," he said.
"No alcohol on board."

His own eyes - so clear and blue and animated
suddenly misted in the middle distance
Of the bright surgical ward corridor
on a quiet Saturday afternoon,
The two of us scrub clad and alone.

"He's from Aleppo."

Hushed.

"This is the last thing he needs."

And then we stopped talking
Because what more could be said
The man's eyes are sad,
And psychiatry confirmed his heart is breaking
And his pancreas is still revolting
And his city is still a devastated shell that may never heal

And there are still horrors that are too Earth-shattering to contemplate

27.

They said on day one,
that we would build our wedding parties
out of people in that room.

That we would put on sterile gloves,
and everyone else
would slip through our fingers.

I have to admit it's true.

We go to events with only our own kind.
Seeing doctors from other hospitals
is adventure enough.

It's a doctor's club, yes,
that doesn't necessarily mean
we built it that way.

No one else understands jokes about the dead.
Or the million frustrations against saintly nurses.

But I don't mind too much.
as long as I'm in a room with fifty other people
howling as a man on a screen says
"sept-uh-KEE-me-ah"
I think I'll be happy anyway.

28.

it's funny that in common parlance
clinical means cold, and detached.

in the physician's vernacular
clinical is the warmest you can be,

smiling, handshaking,
listening.
You make a diagnosis from
a story
and a hand on a belly
or a sound travelling up the tin-and-string telephone
of a stethoscope.

it means human-to-human,
not
"We'll see you after the scan," or,
"Let's wait for the blood results".

it means saying,
without back-up except your own mind,
"This is what you have.
Here's how I will make you better."

It's been lovely reading all of your poems over April, you make your work sound fascinating, brutal, and at the same time somehow poetic. I like the gentleness of #28 - I often find it difficult to mesh dialogue naturally into poetry without it disrupting the whole flow of the poem, but the way you added little quote statements added character and voice that didn't disrupt the overall feel of the piece.

29.

It's crass to mention, of course,
But it is nice, to be paid,

After five years in college where
Every weekend in the library
And every summer on elective
Meant no time to earn pocket money.

It's nice to finally afford that
New leather smell treat.
Or to book a holiday, the only guilt
The incremental growth of your carbon shoe size

You're only paid for two thirds of my hours.
(Respect? What's that?)
But still,
As your generation gets milled down,
Labelled lazy and spoiled as they cast their nets wide,
It's nice to be a millennial
On your own two feet.

30.

At the end of the day,
There is only one question
(Though asked many different ways).

It is the only question anyone
Should ever ask themselves.

Yet we forget it, every single minute,
We bury it under
Banal frustrations

"Did I make anyone better today?"
"Is the universe one photon brighter for my actions today?"

"Did I do good?"

And when you answer yes,
The rest
Melts away.

Only the second time I've commented here, but I've read many of these and I feel like alliyah already said it better but these are just really powerful poems. Congrats on finishing and sticking with a theme!

All of these are absolutely amazing, and reading them trebles the grateful feelings I have to doctors everywhere (which, incidentally, I keep trying and failing to write down as poetry...). Every one of these is intimate and detailed and absolutely humanises the other side of the hospital experience to someone who has only ever been a patient. Thank you for writing these.

I feel like I've learnt so much reading these poems and I love the insight they give! Also I really like the emotion in them and the caring and also the ones with the fieriness I associate with you.

<3

Basically, you are Wonder Woman.

I'm not sure if I learned more reading these or reading your (sometimes horror) stories you'd talk about this month. I mean, these are prettier, for sure, and I always appreciate a play on words - yes, 28 plz.