The Surgeon
As warriors of love
Like small children with rolled up pant legs, We could compare our scrapes and scars.
Some deep and permanent,
others fresh
that we pick at absentmindedly.
"I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours!" I'd taunt.
Suggesting that perhaps we could suture frayed vessels with fine laughter instead of catgut.
I wonder, as a practiced surgeon,
scalpel in hand,
what you would think,
peering inside the bisected map of my world?
If I allowed you to open me from navel to chin.
Would you gaze like a thoughtful mechanic, working under the hood of an old roadster?
I can almost see you shaking your head
with brow knitted as you poked and prodded my wet and purple heart.
Noting with precision,
each crack and fissure.
Of the times I failed to perform the proper maintenance and allowed her to be broken.
And if I let you probe deeper,
would you thoughtfully untangle the wire, the bad sewing of my sincere and botched attempts to mend and gird.
And would you knowingly understand
that I had done the best I could, under the circumstances.
Just so that I could slip and fall and love again and again and again.
Maybe you could make me famous.
as the focus of some less than dry medical treatise:
having properly diagnosed the reason why my brain shuts off conveniently when my body needs to find its own solace or why what little faculty and reason I seem to possess conveniently escapes like butterflies through an open window each time that I have looked love in the eyes.
If you do, I will send you long letters of thanks smiling when you are published in JAMA.
So trustingly I let you trace this line with your thoughtful fingers tenderly touching upon the paths of my self inflicted bruising.
And as your tears splash upon my navel forming salty trails where once I sought your kisses I am not surprised that you let the shiny scalpel fall to the floor.
Knowing,
without making a single cut
knowing,
like the good doctor Luke
knowing,
that first one needs to heal oneself.
Like small children with rolled up pant legs, We could compare our scrapes and scars.
Some deep and permanent,
others fresh
that we pick at absentmindedly.
"I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours!" I'd taunt.
Suggesting that perhaps we could suture frayed vessels with fine laughter instead of catgut.
I wonder, as a practiced surgeon,
scalpel in hand,
what you would think,
peering inside the bisected map of my world?
If I allowed you to open me from navel to chin.
Would you gaze like a thoughtful mechanic, working under the hood of an old roadster?
I can almost see you shaking your head
with brow knitted as you poked and prodded my wet and purple heart.
Noting with precision,
each crack and fissure.
Of the times I failed to perform the proper maintenance and allowed her to be broken.
And if I let you probe deeper,
would you thoughtfully untangle the wire, the bad sewing of my sincere and botched attempts to mend and gird.
And would you knowingly understand
that I had done the best I could, under the circumstances.
Just so that I could slip and fall and love again and again and again.
Maybe you could make me famous.
as the focus of some less than dry medical treatise:
having properly diagnosed the reason why my brain shuts off conveniently when my body needs to find its own solace or why what little faculty and reason I seem to possess conveniently escapes like butterflies through an open window each time that I have looked love in the eyes.
If you do, I will send you long letters of thanks smiling when you are published in JAMA.
So trustingly I let you trace this line with your thoughtful fingers tenderly touching upon the paths of my self inflicted bruising.
And as your tears splash upon my navel forming salty trails where once I sought your kisses I am not surprised that you let the shiny scalpel fall to the floor.
Knowing,
without making a single cut
knowing,
like the good doctor Luke
knowing,
that first one needs to heal oneself.
posted by ~Sparrow | Thursday, August 21, 2008
1 Comments:
I'm horrified at what is happening there. Good for you for telling it so well (and Niemöller's poem is always a touchstone for me)...although I hear now that the psiconano is trying to find a way to block just this kind of writing on the web - but true to form, no one seems to know exactly how he intends to do this. What happened to the manifestazioni of old, the government collapses in the face of corruption and lack of public support? Where is the spirit of rebellion that I remember? They've reverted to the worst kind of apathy, it seems. All get in response to my questions on Berlusconi and his ridiculous laws are childish insults and crude potty cartoons, not one iota of intelligent political discussion. And very little of any of this trickles Stateside.
On a lighter note, during my many years in Rome, my favorite time there was in August - when the city, hot as a sauna, emptied and was mine....all mine.....I endured countless pitying looks as I happily stayed in town....
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