The Etiology of Mr. X

as if it was blown into the halo of park lightsbetween strike three and batter up - Darla Whitehead, Pack of Lies

Yesterday about noon, this fellow
finds us out in the sun and says
he wants his test done now.
We of ambigious natures, nurses
working towards Armageddons
big and small, tow each other
like bricks into rooms
full of camphor and prevention.
It all starts there in the clinics,
under chairs where little girls
run to scream and hide. Big boys
grow pale and old men come to us
before they die to talk
about their daughters, to talk
about their sons. It has been
a long time of such things,
keeping the secrets of nature alive
in our pockets and cupboards,
writing down our sincerities
in diaries on demand. Up front
there are drawers full of history,
treacherous rumours named Murphy and Cline.
His hat suits him well I think
as he chatters on about his deeds.
What does this to us all?
What cause is there to explain?
I've lived and loved and laughed
this much and cried about the same.

Cold Radiations

A purse is robbed
and bothered.
All of them turn up empty,
every one you see.

At night in a dream
the perfect death is planned
and mourned. The djinn cries
generated automatically:

when a purse
is rubbed into the lamp,
the warmth of hands
inside all the last pockets,
faith in all the answers,
and mail order novenas.

Mother's purse was never like that,
equipped
with a fold out cup,
her Salem menthols
and a pack of tissues.
No genies. She opened it
close to the air cooler
in the dispensary
where Billie Alexander shelled
out Doan's for diamonds.
All of the patients trying to get out
the pill shop doors and windows
like cattle in the chute.
The cold air drifted up,
under long ago
into the Arizona radiations.

When her purse turned up empty
as they all do,
the origin of novenas was unknown.



Except for one thing – pills are past tense, history, just one of the obsolete dosage forms that are part of the trivia of the history of medicine. Even the rare holdovers from the glory days of patent medicines, Doan's Pills and Carter's Little Pills (once known as Carter's Little Liver Pills) aren't pills, they're tablets. The word "pill" may still be with us, but the pill – a dosage form made by combining some active drug with an inactive ingredient (soap, bread crumbs, or rose petals were common) that would give it volume, and honey, or later, glycerin (which might be added to keep the pills from getting hard), and rolled into a ball – is gone.

http://www.medhunters.com/articles/oldDosages.html