The Hospital Poem by Mathew Rodgers

Mature content.

I found this poem yesterday. It goes back to the post about sperm cryopreservation when Mathew was first transferred to start chemotherapy. It is probably a first or second draft, I am not editing it further at this point.

The Hospital Poem 

by Mathew Rodgers

Close my eyes and have visions of the NC mountainsides spinning around me with boars, squirrels and deer, unseen, unsung, but present.

Wheeled down every corridor past healthy people.

Past unhealthy people.

Wheeled down corridors where the doors close automatically and the walls lean in hungry and ready to devour

us - the unhealthy.

Drain strange sauce from my right lung twice

My penis looks like a creature from a wax museum,

Friends and family visit - smiling faces.

The more my limbs swell the harder I find it to be witty and clever.

The more my lungs wheeze. Air doesn’t fill the chambers. As I’m about to fall asleep a woman with a strange mask puts it on my face.

I breathe in cool strange medicines then breath it back into the pipe. Like weed that 

Burns cold and goes back into the pipe.

I keep getting fevers at night - we don’t know why.

I keep getting fevers because of the tumor - we now know why.

IV monitor always yelling at me.

Dreaming of a cash cab game

Lights go off in the backseat and start again in flashing rainbows. Sirens and bells.

Contestants look surprised and amazed, cover their mouth with long manicured fingernails.

“Now before you get too excited,” The TMZ talking head says with a smile that cracks his overly brown spray tan.

“This is not actually Cash Cab, but Death Cab. Contestants win a chance for their survival through intellect and a desire for self-preservation.”

Powdered faces that have just finished dining on Alaskan snow crab, steak and sipping on Chardonnay, fall in dismay.

After a commercial break, I enter the death cab. The disco lights and whiz bangers go off.

“Welcome to Death Cab where death is the most likely outcome.”

He turns around in his chair and looks at me.

But you already knew this Matie, as you have cancer,” he winks at me and starts the cab.

Today is my second day of chemo.

The first night was nerve-wracking. Also considering the nerve-wracking day that preceded (and all the nerve-wracking nights and days that preceded it).

Considering the nerve-wracking edema elephant penis rattling around like an old snare drum rattling around trying to obtain a sample for cryopreservation.

But instead moves from the waste chair, to sink, to towel covered bathroom floors. To covered toilet while trying every move in the book.

Father texting me to see if we will make it to the clinic on time.

“By Damn, we will be there in time,” I say in my head and ask my parents to call the lab, make sure the hours are correct. They are merciful enough to give me until eleven.

1 Xanax later I’m feeling up to try again. I try my hand at masturbating.

I get frustrated.

A cleaning lady ignores the large “Do Not Disturb” sign and acts embarrassed and indignant.

As I shout at her,

“Can’t you fucking read!”

That’s when I called my parents back in.

I knew with my body in this shape I was playing a dull game where I thought I could bully the universe. Forgetting the fact that I am the universe looking at myself.

This time I look at myself as I clutch an empty sample jar and lie on my side.

Weeping - my Father’s large hand running between my shoulders.