My latest poem

Emergency Room

“I have a headache,” I said.
“The worst headache
I’ve ever had.”

The doctor used words like
aneurysm, and meningitis,
and tumor.

They did a CAT scan and an EKG.
“We want to do a spinal tap,”
the doctor said.
“You’re joking, right?” I said,
but he wasn’t.

For a few precious drops of
an utterly clear liquid
there are several minutes
of exquisite pain.

First is the anesthetic,
administered subcutaneously
through a large-gauge
needle in three locations.

It hurts like hell.

Now the fun starts.
With an even larger gauge needle
the doctor plunges into the
barely numbed tissue
seeking the gap between
two vertebrae.

He doesn’t find it on the first try.

He doesn’t find it on the second try.

By the third try I’m nearly
in tears, and let out a
“sonuvabitch,” just to let the doctor
know he has my attention.

I ask to see the samples,
never having seen spinal
fluid, much less my own
spinal fluid.

It is a disappointment.
He could be showing me
water, or acid, or anything.
Four tubes, a few drops in each.

They might illuminate the
rest of my life.
What stories will they tell?
What secrets will they keep?

Do I have meningitis? An
aneurysm? Tumor? Cerebral
hemorrhage?
Will I live? Die? Vegetate?

“We’re keeping you overnight,”
the nurse told me. “Doctor says
there is some blood in your spinal fluid
sample and he wants an MRI.”

My question is, How can there not be
blood in my spinal fluid sample?
He stuck a hunk of pipe through
me to retrieve it, surely it made
me bleed?

The hospital is full, there are no beds.
I spend the night in Emergency,
a liter of saline with potassium
dripping into the back of my hand.

In the morning I’m pasted with
stick-on electrical contacts and
given an EKG.

In radiology, they image my brain.

I ask to see the images, and I’m told
there is a law that prohibits them
from showing me pictures of my
own head.

I’m struck by another example
of the myriad things in life
which I just plain
don’t understand.

All these tests with
their mysterious alphabet names,
revealing more about me
than I know myself.

When does a person
stop being a person?
I’m reduced to a collection
of charts and images and
numbers and notes.

Native Americans often objected
to being photgraphed. They felt
that the camera would steal their
soul.

I’m not a mystic, but I feel like
something has been taken from me.
Some test, some sample, some something
has diminished me, and I will never
be the same.