Lab Angst

[DieterM]

Why do you look so scared?
Your young face shines wanly
like a mid-December morning,
flattened by neon-angst,
your red hair screaming
against the roughcast walls

But your hands don't tremble
as you plunge your thin steel
into my bloodstream,
and the samples of my life
trickle into your glass tubes

Will you detect small particles of death
mixing and soiling my hemoglobine?
Or do those toxic bits of me
remain undetectable, still held at bay
by daily combination therapy?

'You can unclench your fist',
you say at last, and it sounds sad,
and while the needle slides out of me,
you avoid my gaze, unsmiling,
then you shout 'Next!'

And I step back out into the cold,
hoping, cursing, lighting a cigarette

[Hawkman]

This is really good Dieter. The only tiny flaws are in S2 where the archaic inversion of syntax is un necessary.

"Your hands don't tremble
as you plunge your thin steel
into my bloodstream
and the sample of my life
trickles into your glass tube."

I have reduced the tube to singular. If you want the tubes to be plural then you need to adjust the preceding lines:

"...and the samples of my life
trickle into your glass tubes."

I really think this is excellent though.

Live and be well - H

[DieterM]

Hi Hawkman, glad you appreciated my poetic offering. Once again, your comments are very helpful, especially the bit about "samples […] glass tubes" vs. "sample […] glass tube". I did learn that particularity in my English classes but seem to have forgotten (in German as well as in French, we are less precise concerning plurals; it's common to say "we all wear a hat" meaning everyone wears his own hat, whereas I know an English speaker would understand that a very very large single hat is be worn by many people).

Best to you!

[blank|verse]

There are shades of Eliot's famous simile: 'When the evening is spread out against the sky | Like a patient etherised upon a table' in the opening image to what is an effectively-written poem, Dieter.

I'm not too keen on the title; something more neutral would make the opening scene more (nicely) ambiguous - are they shooting heroin or is this something more legal? The mention of the 'particles of death' is strong, and the use of questions effectively reflects the anxiety of the narrator. Good stuff.