Surgery Sings // Taking My Knee

I did not expect

Van Morrison to greet me

in the surgery.

Lying flat on my

back in the haze of incense,

no damn patchouli,

I thought I’d have to

genuflect on marble

in humble homage.

Tupelo Honey

plays among blue-masked surgeons

- they might have been green.

A music countdown

begins to remove me from

the scene, looking at

the dancing doctor

lip syncing in his disguise,

cradling a power saw.

Van sings, I depart

the seven middle oceans

of the deep blue sea.

The room where they cut

you is cold, preserve the flesh

at all decent costs.

Cold and proper, a

cold steel saw cuts bone from bone,

upper and lower

legs, separating

what was joined in the womb,

worn daily in life.

Sensible degrees

are dropped in a swap of

man-made, God-given,

a shotgun marriage,

titanium and plastic

cemented to bone,

polished dead metal

inserted through a zipper

of flesh and staples.

I meant to ask if

they played Van through every

cut, cry of my leg

while I slept under
general anaesthesia,
the dream of nothing.

But pain speaks before
any more songs can be sung from
a mouth in anguish.