A Whitman Sampler

A Whitman Sampler: Channeling the Good Gray Poet While Coping with Age in the 21st Century

A senior said, What is this grass that I am still on the right side of?

It must be a greensward drawing me forth

An admonishment not to let it grow under my feet

To cherish my roots but not go to seed

To shun the lay-up shot and swing for the pin

A verdant reminder of renewability through medical ingenuity

(Age's ravages, both core and cosmetic, repaired or riposted

Demeter and Persephone perpetuated by Prometheus and Hephaestus)

A hint that there's nothing greener on the other side

A lush carpet for the feet to seize upon daily

Because to die is different from what many suppose, and suckier.

 

O seniors, fellow seniors,

Finding no sweeter fat than sticks to my own porous bones

I sing the body eclectic

I calibrate myself and sing of myself

And what I've assumed you can assume

For every procedure pertaining to me as good pertains to you--

The freeze-drying of squamous cell growths from head to toe

The Mohs surgery

The wrinkled-retina surgery

The cataract surgery

The exfoliations

The teeth-bleaching

The periodontic gum grafts

The thyroid oblation

The rotator cuff therapy

The complete body surveys

The ultrasounds

The CT scans

The MRIs

The barrage of blood tests

The exponentiation of X rays

The angiogram

The antibiotics for pneumonia

The Flecainide, Metropolol, and Warfarin for a-fib

The Methotrexate and folic acid for rheumatoid arthritis

The Levothyroxine for hypothyroidism

The cortico steroids for polymyalgia rheumatica

The colon polyps excisions

The testicular cyst excision

The antiobiotics for bladder infection

The thrice daily self-catheterizations to countermand the importunity of a puffy prostate

The erectile refunctioning

The femoral lipoma ectomy

The sciatic nerve electrical massage

 

I sing of the craft of

The dermatologist

The periodontist

The opthamologist

The endocrinologist

The cardiologist

The orthopedist

The rheumatologist

The hematologist

The gastroenterologist

The nephrologist

The urologist--

All those specialists whose Medicaring has preserved my electrical-chemical self and who stand by to offer me, if needed,

Miracle Ears

Dental implants

Carotid scrapings

Organ transplants

Arterial bypasses or stents

Pacemakers

Defibrillators

Carpal tunnel surgery

Vascular stripping

Diuretics

Bone marrow treatment

Dialysis

Chemotherapies

Radiations

Metal joints

Prosthetic limbs

While I await science's nano-mapping of the brain and the concomitant promise of wonders to come:

Tissue regeneration

Plastic blood

Kidney cleansers

High IQ cancer cell assassins

Gripping hands

Artifical hearts

Sight-restoring eyes

Dementia-defeating pacemakers for the brain

Cell phone apps for self-monitoring and -medicating--

A copious cornuhopia of embedded nano devices and microchips

A Kurzweilian robotic re-Booting of a bionic me

At last readying me--Quantified Self and (O!) Qualified Soul--for an unending ever green passage to India.

 

Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then, I contradict myself

(I am large, I contain multi 'tudes).

 

Latest comments

29.03 | 17:31

Hi Bruce,
I smiled a lot as I looked! Sometimes I didn't quite understand, other times I did! Keep doing this! You are a fun thinker!

05.07 | 23:04

hi! your blog is really fantastic! you are really lucky to have it. I have one but i did not have a single like apart from me

11.10 | 23:42

No longer pray for an outcome. Just do the footwork, if I can see any. I just pray for the grace to willing accept what the outcome will be.

30.06 | 02:37

yo that is so cool