Where the Healing Is
Stephen C. Middleton
The full deck, though I took the tablets,
Did everything as I was told
Old stories
Kept to the diet
Shrunk or swollen
Co-morbidities complicate
Side effects &
Contra-indications complicit
Feeling deathly, serrated treatment
Defeatist bleakness
A medicated decline
Cold corridors where I shiver
But there are breakthroughs elsewhere
Medical journals as internet attests
(No definite / definitive articles but...)
In any case the specialist is on leave
Perhaps s/he is there
Where the healing is
And (where) I, gutshot, am not.
Stephen C. Middleton is a writer working in London, England. He has had five books published, including A Brave Light (Stride) and Worlds of Pain / Shades of Grace (Poetry Salzburg). He has been in several anthologies, including Paging Doctor Jazz (Shoestring), From Hepworth’s Garden Out (Shearsman, 2010), & Yesterday’s Music Today (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2015). For several years he was editor of Ostinato, a magazine of jazz and jazz related poetry, and The Tenormen Press. He has been in many magazines worldwide. He is currently working on projects (prose and poetry) relating to jazz, blues, politics, outsider (folk) art, mountain environments, and long-term illness.