Calling the Trauma

The path of staples
Gutted a crass and ribald familiarity
Of the decaying tracks where he battled
For one more howl against the knife.

            Sterile gowns quipped about redemption
            For mama’s baby boy
            No name
            No matter
            Because someone wanted him dead
            The surgeon said
            And he was.

Someone wanted blood for blow
Simple, really
And there was sweat, wet,
In static beads suspended
Above cold and pliant flesh.

            They learned once
            Youth could be funny
            And serve a curious criterion for resurrection
            So into the heart of the trauma bay
            Saviors poured
            And descended.

A knife again
Immaculate, conceived to open the cage
Close a broken pericardium
And redirect rivers through empty tributaries
Bathed in red, bathed in darkness
He might have seen the locusts
Through pupils fixed and dilated
Toward fluorescent skies
Mama’s first born son
Relaxing in a lifeless drama of plastic tubes and tentacles
The horrifying vomitus emerging
Only to remind
In death
There is no gag
There are no pulses
And no data to suggest that
Eleven minutes of cardiac massage
Breeds miracles
Death is calm.

            But the crowd still wondered
            In the collective shadows of their faith
            As one casually recalls a bedtime tenet
            If G-d would understand
            “a ruptured left ventricle, status post penetrating trauma.”

So came the staples
To hide open indiscretions
From his Jesus, his Allah
Each push of the gun burned a new letter
Offered a false eulogy
While voices lost in logistics
Ushered him toward whichever heaven
Mourned him.