A three-part, unmetered poem on being a doctor in the Philippines.

Part 2 – Dolor

I am a Physician,
An empty husk. A hollowed-out stone.
The river benefitted by many but mine.
The hand that reaches out whole to be severed fine.

There is a tragedy brewing here—
Seventeen thousand labours with none towards deliverance.
None to break our strewn-up bones,
None to quench the tender ache of our livid spirits.

Why—why must we frown on each other’s disgrace?
We, who are alone to embrace this earthly hell—
Why must we keep pushing the cold steel so close to our windpipes?
We, who by spanning millenia, never ought to take care of our own?

Truly, we sacrifice pieces of ourselves to make each other whole.
We, the unfortunate many—
We, the walking remedy—
Drinking this lethal dose of time.

We must then be mad, utterly doomed.
Suffering in this swirling delirium we face—
Not if for our keepsakes, but ourselves,
In a seething, smoking light out of grace.

We then drag our feet ‘til morning strikes our eyes—
To ignite a feverish flame against wickedness.
Our nights span eternities; eons of absurd struggle between life and death.
We clench this throat of time—suffocating it and us—without relent.

We are what makes this foolish current—
And also what is swept by it.
We herald our own juvenile destruction,
The seed that writes the stones of our epitaphs.

We live, we fight, we die, we are reborn again.
We, who are familiar with this fragile finality—
Storm the gates of heaven with earnest reproach.
We are the hopeless, the helpless, the doomed, and the damned.
Bleed we do, hurt we must, perish we frequent.
We are physicians no more, albeit human like you.

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Dedicated to a dear friend of mine.
May you live free forever in tender joy and embrace.