STYMIED

DON'T MIND ME

I’ve seen plenty of brains, real ones

lifted out and slipped into steel autopsy

pans, this one fresh from a guy cold as

the stainless gurney where he lay. I wonder

at the convolutions and the jellied, gray

mass sliced in half-inch slabs to trace the

bullet’s path. I wondered at their smooth

surfaces one day after the dark exploded.

I thought there should be more, a clue,

a meaning, a sign beyond his green eyed

stare into nothing.

There was no trace of the last flash of frantic,

electric blue at sight of the black hole in the

end of an old Colt forty-five and the swift

zip a lead slug makes when on its wild fling.

I stayed till the disembowelment was

over, pituitary preserved for some big

pharma to milk for money, stomach

contents, blackened lungs, marbled heart,

but none of them gave me pause like the

knowledge that everything this man

thought did or said until yesterday will

always rest in pieces on a shelf in a

large jar of formaldehyde.

I want to ask if there is anything he can tell

us from his big empty heaven or hell, but it

seems he doesn't feel like sharing right now.

Fifty years later, I wonder if he made it out 

when they tore the building down.

Reviews

[Emunah June.]

I have a medical background, as I have been open in saying, so this really was such a fun read for me.

I have never performed autopsies, nor have I ever been present at one, but I have seen quite a few dead bodies, particularly ones that are newly deceased. I agree with this entire sentiment -- there is something so haunting about a person ceasing to be a person once all the life has left them. A human being is so complex in about a thousand different ways, and its so fascinating to see how one becomes so non-complex so quickly.

To read this from an autopsy point of view, thats just so interesting to me. I never quite considered how the act of taking someone's bits and bobs out of them can give room for pause. It was a short read, but a very very good one, and Im so thrilled you gave us the chance to read.

[Vol]

Emunah,
I was eighteen years old and just out of high school and at my first real job as a nightshift orderly in our county hospital. I worked there for about two years, and gained a lifetime of memories, experiences, and insights into the nature of pain and life and death.
Vol

[Emunah June.]

I hate to sound so morbid but I am so fascinated with death and the transition right after. I'd catch myself staring too long at attempted CPR, or wondering what the deceased look like under the sheets. Ive seen a few dead bodies -- simply by just being present or maybe they're not covered up yet -- but I sure wish I could be there to get a really good look. As morbid as it sounds.

[Vol]

Not morbid, well it IS if you are one of the walking de...uh, never mind. I remember telling my folks I was gonna work in a hospital, and them telling me Ihad to prepare myself, I was gonna see some stuff! And I did... the fellow in the poem was a setup for my first day on the floor... He was lying on the gurney but his torso was turned toward the door, his eyes were wide open and his arm were reaching out for, me, or whoever else... I observed a number of autopsies, and never saw anyone left like that again... open with backbone displayed.
Vol

[emmajoygreen]

By no means a pleasure, more a test of the writer's memory and the readers' interest - or not. But like birth death happens; like birth, death happens with mere minutes' pain and a lifetime of pleasure.. generally. You've literally torn back the covers to display a finish that must be unfamiliar to many. Indeed, you've taught what some might not want to know. However, you 'speak' as if in the man's would be shoes the moment he hit the off button. Dramatic - yes; plausable - yes.. More an insight into someone's out of world last bow to an audience, sans what made him human: robots and Al yet to be cut apart, decimated, analysed, etc as if a piece or meat., But then, wait.. that's what..

An insight into an experience that possibly never if ever had the Lord watching to see. He created the whole life story to come, not the hows and ways of a fretwork demo of creation blown apart, seeing what might be a vehicle's parts being made in a factory - unbloodied, mindless, exposed. Then I think of the school's science room, cutting apart a dead mouse..

[Vol]

Joy,
I don't think anyone knows that what they are doing at any given moment, will remain with them like a tattooed date or mud on a tire, nor the consequences of memory.
Vol

[emmajoygreen]

I bow to your wisdom and friendship, sir. Many thanks for visting.

[Lorry]

I wonder if he wondered why he was collected in jars, like if his presence could think, would it think "What a freaking day that was! I had my brains ventilated and then ended up as either a mortuary display or a serial killers display!"
I'll skip past the bit that led to his ultimate shut the f**k up moment of being shot in the head and just pretend it was all a terrible accident that gmhe didn't get to the end of his last sentence with only the "NOOO" part being heard over the bang. 😀

[Vol]

Lorry,
I know what you mean... someone put the brakes on time itself while the earthe is spinning at a thousand miles an hour... does his ghost have time to see itself fade in the distance?
Vol

[John the Baptist]

Really liked the metaphor of the last paragraph. To date, there are no scientific tests for theological concepts. I have little use for them anyway. All we have is consciousness, and exploring that realm is the most important thing in our lives.

[Vol]

John,
I think about that a lot. I think all of science is concerned with the physical universe a rather easy route because it is the totality of our physical experience. I doubt there will ever be a study capable of bridging the gap between what we can empirically experience and what is entirely subjective, despite Musk and his brain implants. It isn't God that is the problem, no matter how we define "Him" or deny Him, it is our inability to actually believe, to keep our faith, to rest ASSURED that our leap doesn't send us into nothing. For me, the existence of consciousness is proof enough that reality is dependent on both the physical, and my ability to experience it, in a way that tames at least a little of the chaos,
Vol