From The Desk of David

He learned the hallway clock by heart,
counted seconds between beeps like beats in a chart.
Patients stretched thin in the ward,
faith on a monitor, faith under guard.

Routine was a guillotine, risk wrapped as rite,
scalpel rehearsals under fluorescent light.
Vanity vanishes, vapor of breath,
Preacher’s refrain in a clinic of death.

Bag by the door—IDs, scripts, chapstick,
Exile kit for deserts of plastic.
Pilgrim of Pepsi machines, communion in quarters,
Sprite as a chalice, vending machine borders.

Not pain but the paperwork cracked him apart:
scribes with their scrolls, diagnoses as art.
Somatic. Resistant. A malingering case.
stones scripted in Epic, lobbed to his face.
Never saw his hands stumble the cloth,
incense of weakness ascending aloft.

Still—he rose, naming saints from the shift,
mortals in sneakers with mercies to lift.
Doctors de-masked, no gods to applaud,
prophets turned profits, each playing at God.

Portal unplugged—silence was psalm,
seventh-day pause, anesthesia calm.
Not in the thunder, not in the flame,
a whisper remained, and it called his name.

So let go the myths of the masked and the crowned,
iron still rusts when it falls to the ground.
Let go the shame of the gown split behind,
let go rehearsals of lines pre-assigned.

But hold to the tech with a hymn in his breath,
vein and vain tangled, life from near-death.
Hold to the verse whispered low in the mask,
“can these bones live?”—the eternal ask.
Hold to the driver who carried him home,
priest without vestments, grace alone.

Beloved—your body’s no court of loss,
but chapel with fractures where stubborn lights cross.
Bandaged like Lazarus, stumbling away,
still testifying though wrapped in decay.

Quit auditioning roles for legitimacy’s stage:
pain is no Broadway, it tears up the page.
Judge, jury, prophet, priest—
titles on badges but mercy decreased.
IV drips, intake forms, insurance screens,
metrics, margins, metrics, machines—
all these idols with iron teeth,
and the kill-shot truth: none grant relief.

He mapped scars as calendars, shelters as signs,
Exodus written in hospital lines.
Stone once hurled as insult, as curse,
painted it neon, pressed vinyl to verse.

Without the past, no breath to discern,
Spirit as fire, flame to return.
By stripes of affliction, healing sings,
close the door softly, keep key like a king.

Secret of holding was hidden release:
not altars of circuits, nor coded priests.
But the Quiet One—quieter than chords at dusk—
found him in beeps, still prophet, still husk,

still patient, still present,
still heard in the hush.