Even Prompter

Fencing with Nemesis

This is the last of the poems for 2021/2022. All subsequent poems are for 2022/2023.

Fencing with Nemesis

Day dawns slowly and my being is wound tight in dread,
this being the appointed morning of the visit, so long thrust
to the dark recesses of my mind in attempt at denial,
this time humiliation at the hands of a stranger, a new pee doctor,
young Martinez having moved on to the greener (or yellow) pastures
of Virginia, leaving me subject to the unknown ministrations
of a man of Scandinavian extraction, judging by his name.

I prepare in meticulous precision, determined not to be unbound
by error or miscalculation, covering all possible eventualities,
while hoping for the best as the time marches remorselessly on,
and I am caught once more in the grip of inevitability.
The moment comes and I depart, steeled and armoured
against all betrayal of despair, joining the Boy, now a man,
in his new car, silent at the wheel but longing for something to say.

We venture forth into a bright Spring day, sun shining, skies blue
and cloudless, the trees verdant with their new leaves,
the air temperate and sweet. So perfect is it that, forgetful
for an instant of the looming nemesis, I savour the release
from Winter’s hold and enforced incarceration, glorying
in the fine date chosen for this, my latest humiliation,
by the prescient hand of fate, for surely this is no chance event.

Thus to the arrival and the acceptance in grim certainty
of the desertion of excuses, acts of God and accidents
that might delay the cruel walk down endless corridors
to my doom, confounded only by how well it goes, all aches
and pains banished by the weather’s unaccustomed bounty,
presenting myself at last, lamb to the slaughter, to Reception
and a nurse so obviously charmed by my accent and wit.

It’s not something I prepare or employ with conscious intent;
in situations of complete powerlessness my tongue becomes infected
with a spirit of feigned and casual banter that soothes the raging beast.
A technique developed over years of desperate secrecy,
I suppose, yet one that now I cannot control, it dulls the edge
of brushes with bureaucracy, leaving me separate and safe
but unknown. If the day conspires with me, who am I to say it nay?


Line count: 35
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry Week 52, 05.25.22
Prompt: Free.