Tag: NHS

And So It Goes

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

I read that a 13-year-old boy died alone
& aged souls will be let go [if there’s no
hope] to free machines & carers restrict
access even to medics & death is not a
sweetened ride for so many & songbird
rips loud beyond unfastened windows &
governments put stocks & shares afore
people & all footballers are capricious &
PPE & ICT & ITU are wings of Mercury &
lies travel wide via internet ties & nature
may not be to blame & China now plans
billions in gains & kids go hungry here &
women are hurt & not by this sickness &
our nurses fear illness & prayers are one
way our hedge-priests comfort us & it is
a pensioner who circles his lawn to raise
NHS cash & men in suits have plundered
by betting against hope & we will wonder
when & how & what & can & ifs & whys &
more questions than answers rotate & in
what year will our egregiousness return &
kill again & when will we learn our lesson
& not repeat old mistakes & settle for life?

 

After Covid

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An aspen curse & other malices
grew among our fearful Easters
& sod all alters – we live effraide
since a plague is [again] among
us [under lockdown’s new rules]

Inserted tubes keep some alive –
ministers sit apart & upright – all
that distance between them & us
is to Save Our NHS [they claim it
as prized] but post-C19 it divides

into smaller bounties [& insurable
quotas] After such zilch is cushty
[there’ll be a hike in future prices –
because our pound is weaker – but
our fighting leader has won a war!]

Bring Attlee back [fuck Churcillian]
& find better ways – no feudal sale
of state & society – no Tory boys in
suits of Armani to praise/Fill each
bare shelf/Veto war-won dividends

Tear up plans for Austerity Again –
it will be our pain [assuming Covid
hasn’t taken everyone]/ We will eat
our words [Only flu virus] – it will be
our last meal – they’ll serve it to us

A Bench Without a Name

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My core temperature
has dropped
a few points –
Yes – I do allow for
seasonal differences

All the while
working timepieces
make veridical turns
between here and there –
ever evenly placed

like fixed hard chairs
in another time-sucking surgery
Sit with me –
It’s cold outdoors –
Stay – before my reminder to move

to face a dog-tired doctor
sat in another swivel chair
He / She will be leant forward
squinting – screen-reading
throughout my consultation

This giving wooden bench
faces due south
as if aimed by a pagan
rather than – truthfully –
at that required angle

to watch a ghost-stepped
amateur football match
After sitting in so many
bright muzak rooms
my huge catalogue

of Chairs Used
in Waiting Rooms
is now complete
[cancer wards excluded –
touch wood!]
I am ready to be published

Stud imprints in dragged mud
and ball-thumping boots
have mashed this playing field –
churned those naked goalmouths
with a good old-fashioned kicking

Standing is not too easy these days –
my cold bones
and low moans meet
Let us get to another bench
to talk some more about life

 

A Calling

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It was a pile of bare facts
offered on thumbed A4 papers
She searched it whilst
suffering from acute self-diagnosis

but could only uncover Diverticulitis
there typed out and slid between
other printed sheets
filed in black dust-lined trays

whilst an old boy too-loudly
then too-brightly – grutched
far too-noisily about
his own complaint to a nurse

Consultants’ rooms
are time-flawed monasteries
of waiting – of slow duties – with prayer
and others’ voices bound to

callings to blind-pulled cells
in which our tired priests sit
But this is my wife’s summoning
to another saint-named place

And – again – an absolution follows
That necessary shrift to solve
discomforts set under our skin
and over our lives

and we are lucky – we leave
without having to see higher gods
for a second opinion
This referral is her small miracle

Conquest Hospital

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Robert Richard Rollins –
I was born nineteen thirty-four –
struggled with the name –
El-dwabe

He worried out loud
that he’d forget
the surgeon’s
Egyptian-sounding name

As he was wheeled –
backwards for ease –
he again apologised
so profusely to the nurse

for his failure to recall
I forget names –
the consultant …
El-dwabe

Checks

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Earth Wind & Fire boogie
in the muted waiting room
But no one dances here

Adverts for vaginal creams
and local dry cleaners
rotate on the large screen

A mother instructs her kid
The patience in her command
fails for ‘naughty little girls’

An elderly couple openly flirt
in the propped-wide doorway
and exchange a loud kiss

My hands turn numb and stiffen
as I wait my turn for ten minutes
of a qualified person’s attention

Immunisation

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It enfolds you in its heated fug,
the wheeled threshold, the NHS hug;
we sit and wait in a digit-lit queue,
but old illnesses will still kill us all:

I went for my ‘flu jab: ‘Done in a jiffy
‘You may feel unwell, perhaps a bit sniffy’.
I’m now pricked against influenza’s grab,
at least for a year then Hunt’ll cut back:

November, next, what will be left?
They’ll have turned down the heating,
and give back less: As I fall apart,
so will the state, we are both diseased,
our futures degrade.

Jewel in the Crown

~ mikebellwrites ~ 1 Comment

Rip it off from the past,
sliced on rusty nostalgia,
a span of heritage,
is this truthful disaster,
when history’s lost
pay old craftsmen to make
more bygones-be-bygones,
real genuine fakes:
Bow to the Crown Jewels,
displaced paste from the past,
profited and traded,
‘cross an empire, so vast;
flaunt valuable rocks,
but sell free-to-use jewels,
those men in blue suits
from the right schools.

 

Well

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

It was first called ‘Welfare’ by a proud state –
no more ideal – we are now told to berate –

Ever less likely to be paid to me –
freelance with Parkinson’s at fifty-three –

Welfare – not there – services sold –
uprooting our ill – our poor – our old –

Any vacuum is filled – so it is said –
but they’ll suffocate welfare until it’s dead –

One nation built high on the backs of the old –
we should pay more in tax so welfare’s not sold