Which would you prefer

An angiogram

An inflexible cystoscopy

Open heart surgery

Sudden death?

What do you like for breakfast

Fried brains on wholemeal bread

Black pudding with fried tomatoes

Sliced haggis

Two Weetabix and a banana?

What would you like the nurse to do

Try to put your cannula into your arm il and burst  a weather vane

Inject you with broad spectrum antibiotics with a blunt needle

Give you an enema

Wash you all over with fairy liquid and cold water?

Read you a story about Donald Duck the evil orange murderer

All of the above?

After all the worst thing is being bored, being alone and being sick.

I had a CT scan today

It’s free so you don’t have to pay.

The iodine is great

If you want to mate.

Otherwise, it improves the display.

Yes they broadcast my scan on TV

I am never embarrassed, you see.

My kidneys are swell

How can they tell ?

Is it something they put in the tea?

They tell me the iodine’s less risky.

It’s not Viagra so it won’t make you frisky.

Believe me, I know.

I hoped it was so.

The only man who came near  was a pixie.

Maybe I should be more alert

And make my voice pleasant not curt

Keep an eye out for men

Although not for Big Ben

I’m so shy I don’t even  dare sweat

Do you think Meter Pandelson’s rich?

He got £75,000 on that pitch

He wanted much more

He’s terribly poor

I wonder where he bought all that kitsch?

The face that was familiar is no more

The people in the streets seem bland as wheat

I dream I hear your key turn in the door

How you loved to walk on long seashores.

The sands of Norfolk charmed our curving feet

The face that was familiar is no more

I’d like to die right here on this  floor

Why should I live now in love’s defeat

I think I hear your  key turn in the door.

I never knew the pain that old folk bore.

They did not speak and left us with deceit

The face that was familiar is no more

I wish someone would seize my heart, it is so sore

If only we were words, I’d press delete

I thought I heard your key turn in the door

I remember Southwold and our seat

We’d cross the river Blyth, the people weep.

The face that was familiar is no more

Yet I hear the key turn in the door

Read me if you will but don’t believe

No human mind is pure enough to read

For through a poet’s words, one may deceive.

Yet we need a language to perceive.

And through our words we sow our our fruitful seeds

Read me if you must but don’t believe.

In such  writing what can one achieve?

Who would cut the heart and make it bleed ?

Through my poet’s words I may deceive.

When we’re wandering dange can impede

Read me if you will but don’t believe.

Yet through a language every thought’s conceived.

Language is impure and so are deeds

Everything we say say may well deceive

We disbelieve the truth for what we need.

In our hearts and souls it’s love that pleads

Read me if you will but don’t believe

Everything I tell you might deceive

Do not be afraid of sacred fire

Did Joan of Arc lack courage at the end?

Kill obsessive thoughts, such thoughts are  liars

In the fire the sacred dove descends

Trust in this and what it must portend

Do not be afraid of sacred fire

The angels  hang in beauty in the choir.

Do not be afraid of sacred fire

No Joan of Arc lacks courage at the end