Day Job, NHS Church and A Battle Royale with your Local Pill Dispenser (P#3)
Day Job
I’m a pill dispenser
A minor ailment trip advisor
A supposed healthcare provider
With an IQ that sits at about eye level
Glaring dimly back at you
My consultation room
Homes myriad news
From scrotal itching
to leukemia associated bleeding
and misspent youth
But bring it on
I’ll listen
At least until you begin to drizzle
About my role as
Gatekeeper
Forlorn bouncer
Of the mighty
National Health Service
Occasionally they’ll switch it up
Giving me muck
“A doctor can tell what’s wrong with you from the way you walk through the door”
An old woman tells me
As I look perplexedly
At the low density pixels
The comprise her daughters
Slightly red, dry facial skin…
I have a mind to tell her off
To question her semi-mystical bollocks
But I don’t
The GP is Gandalf
Forget Catholic priests
Transubstantiating wine in to blood
How about Diprobase
Which you typically slather on your face
Transmogrifying
Into a health-promoting lion
I, on the other hand, am a muppet
A primate
Two arms, two legs and a tenth of the ephemeral energy
Lacking in the sensory capacity
To understand the exact density
Of the chakras
Birthing
From vigorous
Vexing
Dry skin...
But you’re in my domain wench!
Feast your eyes
On the big surprise
That I can provide
Cream!
And Chlorphenamine!
So when we are trying to keep the itch at bay
Your daughter can nod off
and dream a dream
That hopefully doesn’t involve me
NHS as Church
Doctor is priest
With a god
A flock
A bible
British National Formulary be damned
Sometimes I just want to take the hand
Of whatever poor sod
Has crawled to the stand
Longevity, life, health
Weaponised descriptive terminology
Makes stark the parity
Between functionality…
The cavalcade of supportive infrastructure
Which props the cathedral up
Quickly becomes unstuck
Before
The void
The final act
The human condition is lethal
The passage of time
Crystallised
In aortic vein, muscle, brain
Sapping the juice
That once made you loose
It’s sniggers
As you fall
Again and again
Demarcated in trends
But when does the descent end?
On the floor
In the ground
In the morgue
When you begin to lack
The verbal capacity
To explain veracity
And it’s flight from modernity
But I need release
From this tightly bound fleece
To experience frigidity, impropriety
The cacophony
That nests within reality
The sermon may have stuck
The lessons fully-took
But it’s muddled
A promise not well handled
To prevent my leaving
Through the door
A Battle Royale with your Local Pill Dispenser
You come before
Paper slip in hand
Pursed lips
Perusing my slovenly land
A quick hop and a dash
Yet a mile away
Your simple quick health fix lies near the bay
Tap your feet and watch
As my unsightly lot
Whip together something special
To put your decaying corpse back at the pedals
Doctor MacGregor has assured you it cannot fail!
Because otherwise, to what avail
Do you stand staring at this tattered disgrace
Who you want to put in place
Because “how many minutes can I waste!”
It’s a pill
It’s a label
A simple formulation for even those incapable
A rustling bag of delicious treats
Which even Grandma wouldn’t YEET
Sits festering in a den…
I turn and say
“Hey, would you be able to come back another day?”
Gasping, heating
You turn and shout “HEATHEN!”
“Come between me and my doctor?!”
I don’t know how many times he’s had his fingers inside her…
Knees buckling
Begging
I riposte
You won’t combust and turn into dust
But if you must
You can take your business elsewhere
Disgust
A drastic failure of care
“No matter how many strips I have at home, I require it at this very MO!”
My neurons are firing
Blood pressure rising
Why did I choose a profession
Which gives nary a lesson
On dealing with the battleaxe
Striking red hot
Her painful verbiage putting me on the spot
I groan
My body moving
Puppeteered by the rancour
But to get along
I begin to sing a song
Of how many needles I could thrust
Into her ashen husk
Before the General Pharmaceutical Council
Deems me
An undesirable…
Eventually my hips give way
Birthing the life line
The dispenser beside me is giving me the eye
Judging me on the side
As I kneel and provide
“Have a nice day” I call on my way back
To my tomb
Of NHS funded buffoons