POETRY: THICK UNCUT PIECE #49

featuring: 
Frank Baggett & Shirley Jones;
James Baldwin & Toni Morrison; 
Gaytri Spivak & Andy Warhol; 
Mad Murray, the first & Madeline D. Murray; 
Mr. Frenchy & Felicia Higginbotham; 
Garry Owens & Jim Pardo; 

Sam Schnapp & Linda Goodman
plus the nightshift at Charity Hospital's Ward #11.

Now

one might think to oneself

who am I to speak

since

I ain't been gone yet

to see the sick darlings

(a very fortunate predicament, in my limited and biased opinion)

who Andy warned us about

15 minutes ago

who wear white

and cut

heart

and health

hope

and help.

Whose 
practiced remedy

their 
balm, so to speak

could land on your back
cut 
from the groin to the ankle.

And while in their midst 
or under their care, as they like to put it, 

don't be alarmed
if you wake up

groggy, one morning

in pain

frightened

disoriented

terrified actually

w/o your teeth

wondering out loud, 
"where's my wig?"

And the small of your back
(that most private piece of human anatomy)
exposed

and their cold cold hand

wants to cut you open again

--just to make sure.

This time

a couple of beauties

brought to you by shiny fetishious industrial steel #10:

the first gash

a real marvel of modern medicine

from armpit to thigh;

the latest decision

even more graphic incision

from the scrotum to the jaw.

No...dem people ain't gon tell me my sign.

I already kno...'m an aries when the moon's in virgo and the sun's rising in pieces.

Sound Recording: Thick Uncut Piece #49

This work is part of the unpublished book-length project 69 Thick Uncut Pieces: Mutual Mediation on the Mythology of AIDS and HIV. This project is dedicated to The Children who don't have the wherewith all, as we did, to fight for themselves, to fight for their lives.