Zeke Russell
Self Portrait As The Eighth Season Of NBC’s Medical Drama ER
I have been in the beating chaos of this place so long
that I can no longer feel the movement of it.
As if its constant motion and shouting
is just the rotation of the earth,
The thing that maintains the integrity
of life and heat.
I am all of the characters.
Not just the stars and long term cast members,
but the homeless man with diabetes,
the lonely old ladies who acost the doctors.
Have I just been binge watching my own life?
Am I just a endless series of critical patients,
charging in through the swinging doors?
Only to be met with an almost equal
amount of heroic saves.
47 minutes of pain and salvation,
shock and flat line,
entrances and exits.
Repeated over 140 times.
Is this time finally the lesson?
That this is paradise?
To go to the place where you
do the work that defines you.
To find it draped in sacred silence.
To exist in the eye of the storm,
for some kind of endless moment.
Until the same tones sound,
the screen retracts
and credits roll.
I have been in the beating chaos of this place so long
that I can no longer feel the movement of it.
As if its constant motion and shouting
is just the rotation of the earth,
The thing that maintains the integrity
of life and heat.
I am all of the characters.
Not just the stars and long term cast members,
but the homeless man with diabetes,
the lonely old ladies who acost the doctors.
Have I just been binge watching my own life?
Am I just a endless series of critical patients,
charging in through the swinging doors?
Only to be met with an almost equal
amount of heroic saves.
47 minutes of pain and salvation,
shock and flat line,
entrances and exits.
Repeated over 140 times.
Is this time finally the lesson?
That this is paradise?
To go to the place where you
do the work that defines you.
To find it draped in sacred silence.
To exist in the eye of the storm,
for some kind of endless moment.
Until the same tones sound,
the screen retracts
and credits roll.
Self Portrait As The Major Key Remix of Smells Like Teen Spirit
Is this Grace?
To live long enough
to find melody
in a dead man’s voice?
To feel a joy
we never knew
was ours?
Is this Grace?
To live long enough
to find melody
in a dead man’s voice?
To feel a joy
we never knew
was ours?
Ode To The Five Minutes During Which I Thought Judge Judy Was Dead Before I Found Out It Was An Internet Death Hoax
I watched a clip of Judge Judy
before I checked the veracity
of the death claim.
She was telling a young woman
who had bought a car with her friend:
You’re a liar, I always know a liar.
But then she made the other party
pay their share of the car.
You might not know the truth, she said,
but I do.
That was her magic;
she could know you,
without you hating her for it.
So, for the five minutes before
I put her name and the word dead into the search bar,
I wept.
I thought about the time I had to borrow
100$ from my brother.
about six months
after I stopped shooting heroin,
so I could pay the train fare
to get to my job.
He bought me the tickets himself.
I hadn’t thought he would give me cash.
He gave me a fifty dollar bill,
along with the tickets.
I said nothing,
and put it in my pocket.
A week later I took what was left of
the money my brother gave me
and bought a hot dog outside work.
The guy at the cart was watching Judge Judy
on a portable TV with the sound off.
We watched her yell at both sides
in a case about money owed
for damage to an apartment.
I went back inside before it was over.
When I cashed my first paycheck,
I held the money in my hand
for a full minute before counting out
the train fair plus fifty.
I put it in a plain white envelope, that
I would later pass to my brother
when I met him at the movies.
I thought about that,
when I learned Judge Judy was not dead,
even though one day she will be.
At least it’s not true today, I said.
Right now, I said,
everything’s OK.
I watched a clip of Judge Judy
before I checked the veracity
of the death claim.
She was telling a young woman
who had bought a car with her friend:
You’re a liar, I always know a liar.
But then she made the other party
pay their share of the car.
You might not know the truth, she said,
but I do.
That was her magic;
she could know you,
without you hating her for it.
So, for the five minutes before
I put her name and the word dead into the search bar,
I wept.
I thought about the time I had to borrow
100$ from my brother.
about six months
after I stopped shooting heroin,
so I could pay the train fare
to get to my job.
He bought me the tickets himself.
I hadn’t thought he would give me cash.
He gave me a fifty dollar bill,
along with the tickets.
I said nothing,
and put it in my pocket.
A week later I took what was left of
the money my brother gave me
and bought a hot dog outside work.
The guy at the cart was watching Judge Judy
on a portable TV with the sound off.
We watched her yell at both sides
in a case about money owed
for damage to an apartment.
I went back inside before it was over.
When I cashed my first paycheck,
I held the money in my hand
for a full minute before counting out
the train fair plus fifty.
I put it in a plain white envelope, that
I would later pass to my brother
when I met him at the movies.
I thought about that,
when I learned Judge Judy was not dead,
even though one day she will be.
At least it’s not true today, I said.
Right now, I said,
everything’s OK.
FROM THE AUTHOR: These poems are part of a larger manuscript entitled “Portrait Of The Artist As A Browser History”. I am a performance poet living in Boston and Central Maine. My work can be found in Wyvern Lit, Maps For Teeth, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Oddball Magazine and Broken Pencils Press.