He's Not Flash, But He's Fast and His Name is J

As I said in the opening post (about a day ago..), I really hope this can be a space for other friends, poets and poet friends to share their work. So following an open plea sent to my friends, poets and poet friends, I was thrilled to almost immediately receive an email back from my good pal, Justin Searns.

J is one of those people who has a natural gift for writing. His poems are incredibly powerful, every word deliberate. I won't say too much about this poem (and just for kicks, I'll let you guess where the clinic is...), but I will say this: when J sent this to me it was the first time there was a title attached to it. Gravity. Perfect. This is the line that rings in my ears for days and the image that really haunts me from this piece. Please show him some love via comments-- I think this poem deserves nothing less.

Without further adieu, from Portland by way of Denver, Colorado, Justin Searns:

Gravity

This clinic is dirty. Dirty like the hump of trash we set on fire outside.
This clinic is dirty. Dirty like the mouths of goats sifting through that smoldering pile. This clinic is dirty. Dirty like the needles we keep herded and separate.
This clinic is dirty. Like a cheap day care is hectic.

It is out-of-control dirty. Inertia dirty. Newtonian physics dirty.

And I,
I’m just a third year college student.
Ineffectual and impotent.

I’m writing a research paper, so all I can do is

Scribble notes
Talk
Breathe

Cling to the back of Sophie’s white lab coattails
in front of me.

Assist her, the only doctor for 50 miles with the lumbar puncture in bed seven. Look over her shoulder at X-Rays back-lit by sunlight.
Keep her company as she burns tobacco sacrifices to the gods of stoicism.

This clinic is dirty.
Like Ward 6.

The unventilated Tuberculosis room.
Where an old woman from across the aisle locks eyes with me,
so I swear to keep it secret that she wore nothing but gravity.

That her shoulders folded back like clipped angel wings.
That her head rocked forward, a cradle to her country.
Double bent heavy under the base of this
pyramid scheme.

This clinic is dirty, like the backs of her knees,
slung over the side of that steel frame stretcher at an impasse.

To stand up and try walking or
lay back down and
try dying.

We move on, to pediatrics, so Sophie and I can check up on a half-calendar life
5 pounds later.
His mother is propped against the edge of the bed twisting an IV between her fingertips like an umbilical cord.

All three of us wonder
how something so small can be so shrouded in shadow,
when months earlier, he was being forged in light.
A boy, too frail to raise his eyelids
cradling death in his hands like it was his fucking birthright.

Sophie, don’t hold eyes with me. I don’t want you to see this inner complexity,
for how some doctors can lose their humanity,
so easily.

This clinic is dirty, like a broken condom.
Like a catchement area of 700,000 people
and an HIV rate of 45%.

This clinic is dirty, like the politicians.
Who misplaced it’s funding exchanging full coffins
for swollen coffers

If cleanliness, is godliness.
Then god grew tired of this place long ago.

And now this tin roof palpitates, these asthmatic windows wheeze out warnings, these walls harbor no welcome for weakness, so I collapse outside them,
Screaming into the wind at people
8000 miles away.

Wondering how far my voice can carry on air.
Knowing folks back home won’t see life like this,
except in soul-shiver nightmares.

This clinic is dirty and my backbone has left me.
So I crawl my way back down the hill home,
eagerly.

I lose myself.

Forget my day.
Pour some tea into my cup.

Wondering
Why we are all so certain.
That we know which way
is up.