Lurking

Illustrated by Samantha Fulton. 

Misery hides from us at blind spots on traffic lights,
it twirls itself in neurons and muscles and cysts and clots,
covers itself under smiling skin and merry songs
and in the house of time, unwelcome, it arrives unannounced.
It drives us hurriedly to these massive buildings where people pray to human gods,
they wear white and blue and their shrine always bears a cross
where some are hanged and some redeemed.

Hospitals are a miserable sight,
their chariot comes with a siren, never pleasant.
It declares arrival of mortals to a place
where their intellect and power, plans and stories, 
all suffer a time lapse.
Rewinding their lives, struggling with pain,
they sit in corridors where stretchers never lay bare. 

The reek of medicines, antiseptics, syringes and blood,
floors are always white and you hardly spot any clocks
on walls which drip not with old paint but cement, crying in agony.
Hospitals don’t believe in time; 
they stick a tongue in your face.
Saliva results cure
or mockery.