The tubes display the clotted fair; pumping the pageant
of ruby lips up to the surface to give Them the gift
of the nod in an eye, the flickering switch,
with that 'no patients' scorn, swabbing your veins dry,
touching you without touching.

Just how loudly do you have to stick out your tongue?

Stoic on the bed, the ceiling cackles like cockroaches
and I am a child - one, two, three, four, five, six...
four hundred and fifty nine and I am blind

until someone tuts at the the crook of my arm in the dark

and I am back, starched.