Drama

 

Drama

 

Hospital drama beloved by wives, sisters,

septic warts, boiled spots, picked blisters

and scratching posts, will make no demands -

no chiseling concrete with plastic spoons,

or deciphering lyrics of Paddy McAloon,

because if you’re still looking for Atlantis

you’re never going to get there soon,

instead, find a cushion, own your room,

croon along to some banal opening ditty,

‘Casualty’, ‘Holby City’, ‘Angels’ and, isn’t a pity

they got rid of that torpid senior charge nurse

Charlie Fathead, in the second verse,

a fatal stabbing or something worse

they say he only just survived - retired hurt,

yet in the ambulance, he’s glad

for these little dramas will make us mad.

 

 

Prosaic

 

Not so, Mistress Mine, oh, say not so

you diamond, one of your actual few

that decades of toil and digging coal

might uncover, a nightingale among crows,

wide circumvention of Berkeley Square,

or any drama you might find screened there.

She’s back to normal hypertension

or, she says, at least it’s in remission,

frowns profound - it’s always like that dear,

bone marrow, platelets - and it’s not very clear

to actual ‘House’ refuseniks like yours truly,

these livers, cholesterol and Vitamin D

because, you do not go, so no red flags,

but most of all she rues the fat that sags

and later as it’s dancing in our laps

she shrugs as we scoff McDonald’s wraps.