when the portly doc with booze on his breath
ordered his nurse to call him Oral Roberts,
six or seven old infirm patients stacked
like cordwood in the musty waiting room,
overheard his demand, recalled the mystic
titan for Christ and the many scrimped dollars
they’d sent via U.S. mail to Tulsa,
their own dustbowl Vatican,
with bemused expressions of hope
they tossed prescription bottles unused
into a green wastebasket,
threw down stained Popular Mechanics’ and Vogue
without address labels on the worn faded carpet,
collapsed shiny aluminum walkers like demolished
buildings downtown and stood up straight together
free of disdain, for their moment of truth,
clear and plain as Oklahoma in May,
the gang of Medicare oldsters
like a band of pirates or pilgrims
were made whole and healed in
that dank waiting room while the doc
and his nurse forgetting duty
to patients enjoyed oral relations with
nary a word,
fucked out their brains in Jesus’ name
on a wobbly exam table,
Nurse Ratchet and the doc drove each
other insane, swore Hippocratic oaths
at orgasm’s apex,
the whole damn place
enjoyed what’s called in the trade
a flight into health,
socialized medicine deluxe,
sans insurance forms and co-pays.
and within one week they were fun/
damentally dead,
od’ed in their unprescribed capsule
of godly sweet love.
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