on a hospital waiting room

the soft red points on the wall-clock clllickk out their obligations: grinding across the wide white face: eyes-less nose-less moon-circle, metering out seconds in sharp bursts of military practice-fire. a little Indian boy stares in morbid fascination at the jaundice-colored marble in the floor, letting a few drips of red kool-aid drip from his paper cup, red sugar-water filling the cracks in the topography. the nurse enters amicably and up snaps each head: what a power trip for the empty-eyed hospital staff. a man in brown suede boots unwraps a piece of gum: slowly fingering the yellow strip: he folds the wrapper into clean careful thirds and then crumples it into a silver ball. a severe looking woman in scrubs fondles a cat-checked paper bookmark, in large legible blue letters proclaiming "check Me-yeow-t!". she isn't reading, she is rubbing her small white fingers into her eyelids.