About Recovering Beauty
(after Philip Larkin’s ‘Ambulances’)
written by: Jim Bellamy
Proud and professional, these beds
thread proud blooms of mystery, give
back a long, lingering orb
to every schizoid smile. Bright,
glossy, fay, charms on their backs,
they come to rest on every ward:
all streeted slab minds are visited.
The nurses strewn midst warts and brogues
or children running from the trees
past cells and wimpled swingers seize
each wild and whitened face that tops
each champing blanket; momently,
as madness matters swathe and marry:
And sense now the rolling scentedness
that cries beneath all dreams made blue,
and for a second greet the high soul,
so healthful, mad and fucking true.
The patient wards conceive. ‘My, My’
they whisper at their own dismay.
For formed away in some deep wound
may flow the insane yell of lust
round lonely living so near death’s end,
and what was revered in its dead crust
amongst blind tears, the wrangled rend
of familial mummy dadas, there
At last time starts to heighten. Far
from the constraints of christs that lie
unreachable inside life’s tombs
the doctors fart and let sex fry
through closer things than what has come,
and thrill to mind-mess all men are?
- Hospice - March 19, 2024
- About All Hallow’s Eve? - November 5, 2023
- This Grave’s Grinding Know-How - August 24, 2023
