Again, I enter your domain

and feel the queasiness

of my symptoms take a tumble,

for your eye is uninterested

and your stethoscope brutal,

a cold metal harbour

for your five minute lesson

in your ignorance

and impatience, watching

the clock tick over, counting down

the sick, marking them off,

crossing them off;

the sigh of the same story once told

now the conjured message of disguised help

me please, modern

life the incorrigible scourge

of modern living.

I look into your eyes,

do I dare unburden

in the drastic hope

that you will see me as a human

being with fears, alarms,

dread,

or do I just ask for cream

to keep down the psoriasis

that gets inflamed

when I think of crossing your door.

Ian D. Hall 2017