The Starving Frog

So close, not far

It’s quite bizarre

This frog won’t seem to eat

Though quite unclear

I still give a cheer

To accomplish this minor feat

No attempt to snatch?

Have you met your match?

Just do it! For the sake of Pete

For until now

I didn’t know how

Perception could so easily defeat

"I don't know"

Two eyes of hazel

Green and gold and gray

Like they couldn’t decide

Bigger than they should be

But not enough to strike

They used to be blue

Just wasn’t a good fit

Like the golden hair

Inked dark to match the brows

The ones of above

Two eyes of hazel

Whites turned pink and glass

Coated in ocean

A pool beneath builds

The dam of lids and lashes cannot hold

Spheres of sadness breaking free

Gliding slowly with deceitful grace

Your eyes are so beautiful when you cry,

But why?

She glances up to give her reply

Put in My Place, Again

“WHAT IS YOUR DIAGNOSIS”

Was this in the lecture? 

I never used to go

Or said in a meeting? 

I was distracted by the food

No, it was in a question

That I forgot to ask     

Because the answer

Is still under investigation

It was related to a patient

                                                                               That I had no time to see

I kept on clicking

                                                                               She kept on scrolling

Fumbling, Cursing

                                                                               Wiping, Swiping

And I am waiting

                                                                               She is waiting

                                                           

                                                           

We are waiting

We are unified,
Albeit briefly 




He's not waiting:

“BREAST CANCER”

You've proved your point

                                                                                                            She is trying

That you know more

                                                                                                            She is crying.

And the answer

                                                                                                             Is he lying?  

Is no answer

                                                                                                             She is dying.                                                       

                                                               

“WHERE?”

Simply put:

"My soul."

A letter to my parents

Dear Mom and Dad,

Have you noticed the spontaneous calls have ceased?

When I must go home, do you not see the sadness in my eyes?

How can the ones I love the most pretend the one I choose doesn’t exist?

How can you say you care about him when you refuse to meet him?

Are you aware that he is just another human being? 
Did you know he’s one of the good ones?

Is it because if you don’t see it it’s not real?

It’s not personal?

How is it not personal?

Will it not be personal when there’s no need to hang my stocking for Christmas?

Will it not be personal when you won’t see my children some day?

When will you realize that money and material items will not take up the slack?

How many times have I heard you tell me, “we love you unconditionally?”

Why is there one exception?

Are you embarrassed?

Are you aware Jesus ate dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes?

Why can't you meet me where I'm at, as He does?

Love?

Sometimes, I don’t know.

Saudade

She so adored

Every waking moment

More than you ever knew

Under the elaborate weave

Of her flowing meridian

Seeing your smile

She toiled an amaranthine aeon

To meet your fancy

To illuminate your impeccable perfection

Erasing incessant, insidious saturnity

For any acknowledgement

In your invaluable admiration

Instilled the birds with Heaven's voice

To sing her praise, of unconditional joy

For the life in your every breath

In your every word

Escaping the perch

From your sweetest lips

She recounted millennia,

Contemplated an eternity,

Carved canyon and crater,

Crafted inexplicable, extravagant marvels

Adorned in life, cradled with devotion

So intricate, so exceedingly rare

Just for you, and only for you

Just for a glimmer, of your adulation

Misses you now, more deeply

More than rain

Mourns the days

Away from Heaven

Away from Her embrace

Away from the one that loves you most

In the endless arms of an oblivion

You will never know

The sorrows she sings

But I hear them

More than I wish to

Draped in moon shadow

Picasso's The Tragedy

Draped in moon shadow, dressed in a tailored sorrow

There is a weight to the asphyxiating air
Heavy-laden with a diaphanous vapors
Hardened by a lingering soft touch

They stand together but are too much alone 

Heads bowed in both quiet faith and surrender
Despair is seldom as sweet as when her sounds are spoken in memories

Fractured hearts can little support slumping shoulders
Darkened eyes laid to the ground obscuring view

Even after souls disappear, hopes and curses remain
Neither the angels in a broken heaven 

Nor the wretches held deep in the brooding sea
Can ever sever a loved soul's eternal memory

Hope

Hope 

by Arjun Iyer

Baby, we’ve all got high hopes for you

Even when you pop out pug-ugly

Fat arms, fat ass, cheeks chock-full of fat

Squeezing shut those squinty lids

That we’ll all love just the same.

Because to us, your chunky mug will hold eyes, beautiful as your mother’s

And in that tantrum clamors a voice, strong like your father’s.

[AI1] Your skin will shine a soft café-au-lait

And we pray that you won’t inherit my nose, anyway.

Baby, your first breath of life will take mine away[AI2] 

My god, you’ll be brainy – brilliance is your legacy, like a tree

That from seed needs to be nurtured deep within the earth

Our soil is fertile;

Formulated from a finely combined blend

Of aged compost and Haber’s ammonia[AI3] 

And when we’re done, we lay sweating and spent[AI4] 

Hoping everything goes as it was meant

Baby, I worry

For your sake, but mostly for mine[AI5] 

It is a worry that is deep and pervading, invading my thoughts

More than any idea not yet conceived[AI6]  ought

A father’s fears once had names like typhoid and diphtheria

Their weight settling on the womb of his young wife like a grinning death’s head

And I? I worry about whether my baby will ever ‘find herself’.

Whatever that means.

A father’s fears once were immediate and suffocating; when

For every three hopeful women the Angel of Death passes by

It lurks behind the belly of one hopeful woman.

Forget Harvard Law and trust funds

All he can think to do

Is hope.

---

Footsteps

Silent I stand
No one asks me to speak
I ponder the paths that will be taken

Anxious feet surround me
Eyes darting across pages
Worry furrowing deeper in the valleys of their faces

Backs aching, twisting with the weight of life
Crisp rustling of tomes
Tight whispered conversations

Little air between words

The man down the hall they cannot fix
Their tools have all been tried and failed
Strained hands rake taut scalps

More than resolution, a craftsman's satisfaction has been lost

They briskly move into other rooms
Knowledge setting their gaze low
Tomes heavy in their hands

A grim scraping heard with their steps
Irons dragging with their gait

life
death
life
death
life
death


Inspired by:

Dürer, Albrecht
Christ Among the Doctors

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/durer/

Morphinomaniac

Inspired by Eugene-Samuel Grasset, Morphinomaniac

Look at her wide-open and bright eyes
Trying to talk and tell a story.
A story that the present denies,
And the past claims as a mystery.

Deep thoughts weigh heavily on her mind,
Her body bears the scars of a lifetime.
Lonely in this place of unhappy peace she is longing
For a quick fix, for a fleeting moment of prime.

That young beautiful woman with the long dark hair
is our friend, our sister, our daughter, our mother.
Too many of them walk our streets to nowhere
Trapped in a cycle of dependence and peur.

The needle in her vein, her finger on the plunger,
Her eyes stare at the pain, and she goes under.

                                                                 

Reflections from a modern mentor

Reflections from a modern mentor
Inspired by Francisco de Goya's "De Que Mal Morira? (Of What Will He Die?)"

I teach, research, and see patients:

The Holy Trinity

To Paris, Prague, and Amsterdam

I’ve traveled far and wide.

At conferences, I present work

That’s students’ and not mine.

I save the forest for the trees

To focus lens behind

The Third World folks I fly to heal

After it’s photo time.

My anecdotes, I intersperse

With names of famous men

Whose laboratories I’ve traversed

Since tender age of ten.

“TMP/SMX Tx:

IVDU B.E.”

My pearls of wisdom train the new

With slides of PowerPoint.

With just one test, on June 18th

You’ll become just like me.

Unlike that schlub that I once met

In OR #3.