Trust

 "Our patients are

trusting us

to..."

To...

Ah alas much ado

for how misconstrued

intoxicating no less

we are so

deeply perfused

and yet refuse

refuse too risk

-y

to be

disabused

of this

this

this grand delus

-ion

Of medicine.

That spares us

the looking glass of

Our own

sorry

mediocrity

our patients do not trust us

any more than we

Trust them.

Trust a stranger

Trust ourselves

Our patients lie naked

Undressed

Allow us

Nay pay us

in exorbitant amounts they

cannot afford

To enter their bodies

And cut and sew

And cause them pain

And forever they know

They know

They

No.

They

bear our scars

And share our marrs

And

never again are

They

The same.

For we have

been

Inside them.

And yet

they let us 

But please

let us cease this

Grand delusion of

Grandeur

They allow us to cut them and

Read them and

Bleed them

Simply because they have

no

choice

No choice and

no

freed 

-om.

They've not a voice

They wouldn't be here if they

Had absolutely any other

choice

at all.

We have jobs

I fear

Only because the alternative to 

Our touch and

Our scalpels and

our vile

-lation

Our knowing them more intimately than they will ever

know themselves

From the inside

Their lying naked and unconscious and

bound

in a room of

Strangers

is nothing more or less terrible

Than choosing not to

Refusing to be fixed and

Succumbing perhaps to 

The abnormality

The sickness 

The pain

The death.

And so

Rather than face the abyss or bliss of

unknown and

Ending this

lifetime

They accept, on occasion, that

Allowing us to fix them 

Is mild to moderately more palatable

Or at least perhaps less frightening

The evil

They know

As it

Were.

But please

Oh please 

Let us once and for all cease

this grand shared delusion

That our patients trust

Us

We are human

We are fallable

And yet

Somehow

It doesn't matter

Doesn't really matter that

our Patients

Don't trust us

At all.

Because the ending is the same

Regardless.

This discourse I'm afraid is

Of no consequence

For

We

get up

We scrub in

We violate them deeply

And

If we're very lucky

very lucky

And we work very

Very

hard

And we sacrifice all to the point 

The point of our own 

Sorry and sorrowful demise

We so despise

ourselves

resent our sale of souls

Medicine may pave the path to 

greatness 

to

Gds own grace and 

power

but in lifetime's greatest hour

The devil mans the toll.

his booth an ever hellish hole 

That toll

for which we have

bartered away our

humanity

But if we do

die that death

and

sacrifice

just so

Then maybe

Just maybe

We fix them.

Maybe

Someday

We will be the

bumbling fool the

monkey with a

scalpel and wrench

drenched

in human ex

-crement

The stench

-ful prime paradox

we are so mocked in

merciless irony

unceasingly the

mumbling mighty moron who

saved

Some body.

Who allowed

A patient

A person

Some stranger

enough time

time we will never know 

perhaps

enough time to

Live to 

Learn to

Trust.

Not us.

A loved one

A dear one

A friend

Perhaps through our hands

Gd alone may extend

to them

the time they need to

Trust

After all.