mikevarley.com

On Health Care

I arose one morning
naked to potential harms –
exposed in a nation of lobbies.

And my duty was plain:
to recover myself from future misfortunes
distasteful to casual ears.

The family barber, the third
down neighbor, the cragged
librarian, the cordial face.

Who receive your ruin with genuine something,
reflect on relief for the us vs. them,
then repack your sadness as cautionary scare tales,
reinforcing a truth that is tired and hopeless.

So I went down to the cinema
where the action movies played,
hopin’ to figure their talent
for makin’ sick things okay with music.
I asked the teller, a flannel feller, what he
reckoned would be a good score for malaria.

His glaze cried manager
and I complied, buying a billet
in the name of wellness.
I found the boss
stacking wood and pounding flapjacks,
asked him the best montage
for Hepatitis C.

His beard quilled anger
but I stood on regardless,
not wanting to ruin my mother.
I gambled he’d know
what sound effects go
with cancer or terminal others.

“Listen here, son,
these cords don’t sort themselves
and I’m powerful tired.
Take this reel to Viewing Room B
and leave us your license
for measure.”

The reel was government dogma
stashed safe in a shortbread tin.
Viewing Room B,
a one seat affair,
Biology style projector.
I slipped the copay into the slot
and watched the master plan.

It started red, red, clay red,
fallout red, fear for the innocent red,
and the music began: Old World choir
flanked by screeching wheels
and dire percussion, flashing images,
logic vouching for madness,
children weakened to wilting, laying on tile floors,
automated TouchTone condolences,
star for settlement,
pound for denial,
three to repeat all your options,
elderly neighbors lost
to the maw of vernacular,
forced purchase on Institution’s shores,
amber prescription world views
halting further history, clothing the masses
in company tee shirts,
waiting room magazines stopping the bleeding,
doctors prescriptions incentives for getaways,
a trip to the Caymans,
a Percocet paradise,
A legal fist clenching convictions,
sapping Hippocrates’ boast,
a black rotting hand on a slow dying beggar,
wrapped in a world of denial.

And then the dollar, the dollar,
the saving green dollar,
topped with a ten gallon halo,
riding to town on a horse named
Sally, white as in right as in old,
a trick shooter collar with burnt mustard tubing,
offering Pied Piper solutions,
blind insurrections against values
our fathers held dear.
A money transaction to chase away
fears the ancestors cured with compassion.

When it was over, I signed what they gave me
and tried to forget.

[audio:http://www.mikevarley.com/old/words/MikeVarley.com On Health Care.mp3]