Procedure

Hang by your rewards dreaming through recheck.

Absorb as while white diet the world’s colour.

Fill out the health form boxing your whole life.

Divorce daytime TV its waiting room script.

Hold that thought. Count the half hours watching

Hospital ceilings lenses sprinklers vents

Repeat anaesthetist’s twenty questions

Alarms spotlights then needle in the vein.

Take me to the mostest amazinger party

Volume up ‘Everlasting Love’ and friends

Coming through doors more friends and spangled food.

Wake to anaesthetic curtaining up on

A world where Australia’s on fire

Gripped by science, intrepid and grandiose.

Photograph: The Austin Hospital and Burgundy Street in Heidelberg from the Level 3 waiting room of Warringal Private.

Procedure (December)

Two serves of PicoPrep, one beaker of GlycoPrep. Fetta on bread for dinner: the white diet. Carol’s quiet 7am drive down Burke Road. Warm December morning before storms. Waiting Room Christmas tree. Tie the hospital gown at the neck. Sticky-tape the wedding ring. Wristband: DOB 07/05/1955. Nurse: “Have you had one before?” Anaesthetist: “You will fall asleep in about fifteen seconds.” Sleep, with my shoes on. Blackout returns to white room. Slow-mo walk to rest area. Bing sings a “very merry...” Lovely egg sandwiches. The specialist arrives with benign finding. His benign bedside manner. Out the window: the Blue Dandenongs.