Month: October 2016

 

The Morning Liturgy
By ROSTI

It’s 9 AM
And my phone,
Which has been monitoring my slumber
All night,
Chimes its tune.

Now, that fucking song will be stuck in my head
As the day progresses.
I check to see
How well my sleep app
Says I’ve slept,

Completely ignoring
The fact that I feel
Rested and ready
With only a bit
Of residual from sleep clinging to my eyelids.

The next part of the ritual
Is to expectantly
See who has been in contact
Overnight
As that cloud of awakening dissipates.

I empty my mail trash
(I get a buttload of that
Despite trying to keep my inbox
Fastidious)
Lingering on my favorites.

After doing what I can
On my handheld,
I roll out of bed
To the adjacent chair
At my computer,

The central piece
Of my organizational life,
And attend to my reminders
And any work
I couldn’t do remotely.

I preen the computer
Carefully, like a vine keeper
Minds his orchard
Keeping my machine
Lean, fit and trim.

After this
(And it may take some time)
I’m ready for the Coffee Rite…
10 cups of cold, filtered water
Over burr-ground Sumatra, a guilty indulgence.

The next formula
Is the March of the Medications.
They were carefully laid out
The evening before
And all ready for the ceremony.

This one with food,
That on an empty stomach.
Each one
Taken like Communion
Due to their large size.

The necessities done,
I turn to hair and wardrobe.
All just so
As the ceremony comes
Toward its end.

Finally, the dog’s pills,
(You see, at our house,
We keep Big Pharma going strong)
The bundling up…
The harness on the patiently waiting pup,

Out the door, across the parking lot,
A glance at the headlines
Blaring from the machine in our path,
Across to his favorite bush to water
And that delightful first sip of java.

The “Mass” is ended…and we go in peace into the world
For another piece of the miracle of a shiny new day.

© Richard A. Martin, Jr., MD, CPC, 2016

Can You Fix Anything. Anything At All.
By ROSTI

Can you fix anything?
That would assume
You had some ability to change the past
And as we know
That is not possible.

Or is it?
Can we create a meaning for the meaningless?
Can we work to conform a given story
Into something
We find more palatable?

What about finding meaning
In the meaningless?
Is there such a thing as “meaning”?
I think I know that answer
But, life, sometimes, in my experience,

Is a cacophony of noise and furor
Signifying nothing
It is true, though
That I still try
To wrestle a story into a frame,

Like a painting…

_________________________________

Can you fix anything?
That would suggest
That we can alter
Immutable facts and happenings
Which we cannot.

Or is there a way?
Perhaps our lives are about
Creating a meaning
Out of the meaningless
In order to present it in a frame

_________________________________

Can You Fix Anything? Anything At All?

The short answer
No, but you can fix
A thing’s
Meaning…

© Richard A. Martin, Jr., MD, CPC, 2016