All the Sad Doctors
With black bags stuffed below their eyes, all the sad doctors come to me now like mourners in the time of plague. Crying in their office bathrooms, carrying boxes of charts home at night, they are too tired to eat, and sex excites them less than a committee meeting. Without dreams, their eyes watch the clock tick off the wounded hours-thousands of doctors writhing on the scarred suture line of American medicine like a cargo of used syringes washed up with drowned birds on an oil-soaked beach.
With black bags stuffed
below their eyes,
all the sad doctors
come to me now
like mourners
in the time of plague.
Crying in their office
bathrooms, carrying boxes
of charts home at night,
they are too tired to eat,
and sex excites them
less than a committee meeting.
Without dreams,
their eyes watch the clock
tick off
the wounded hours-
thousands of doctors writhing
on the scarred suture line
of American medicine
like a cargo of used syringes
washed up
with drowned birds
on an oil-soaked beach.
