by Richard O. Moore
Afterward, you look on the world as a happy place
flush from arrival into a new land of not being in pain.
Is there anything forgotten, now that the screaming's stopped?
The voltage doctor has put upon you a happy face.
Coffee stains come and go, echoechoecho.
This can be validated, the night crew cleans up.
A gurney wheels you to damnation sedated, but somebody
pushes... a body...
Name your place or person, it is not a freedom.
Serenity is unearthly,
the hospital staff tests you with the hammer of happiness,
we say each other's names, but also we remember,
we remember
it all : and nothing.
The Write Question blog
The Write Question on Facebook
The Write Question on Twitter
The Write Question podcast
Richard O. Moore (1920 - 2015) was 90 years old when his collection Writing the Silences was published. that collection included the poem "Quotation." Moore was a poet, filmmaker, and seminal figure in public radio and television. Moore belonged to the San Francisco Renaissance literary circle of Kenneth Rexroth in the 1940s and 1950s, a precursor of the Beat poetry movement.
