Muted Spectators

Ominous high-pitched voices 

In some sort of emergency 

On the phone, calling up for

An ambulance, mingle with shushes. 

Tongues click in despair.

A shrill “We-oow-we-we-oow “,

Echoing far and wide,

Pervades my being as if 

A dozen sirens were

Piercing my ears.

My senses, I muffle with

Familiar sounds:

Hushed cries of a baby,

The clink of crockery,

Hurriedly shuffling feet,

Sillk curtains’ rustling

And my beloved’s sobbing.

But

Hands lift me up.

Probably, I’m setting  out on 

On my last journey… 

***
Woe to hospital blues!

I wake up to

Another hollow day.

A cold antiseptic odour 

Invades my senses,

Pungent sterile vapours 

Kick-start my doped brain.

I am yanked into 

Shocking wakefulness by hands 

That probe my wrist 

And elbow; and then 

A shooting

Pain erupts,

The after effects 

Of a stabbing jab

That alarms me.

***
My swollen lids disengage from 

Opiated slumber; my last 

Companions are grunts, 

Sighs, piteous moans

And coughs that

Swarm my ears.

A cacophony of metallic sounds

Fuses with voices muttering,

My name as if I weren’t there,

Submerge my senses.

In the face of death

No conspiracies live!

 Devices hum no more.

A stillness stretches

 Annoyingly sweet, 

Momentarily cloying at my being.

My last wakefulness is suffused with

An orchestration of jarring sounds 

that is to lull

The rhythm of my last breaths

As I pass away.
********
Mumtaz. N K

7-11-2020
Picture courtesy: Unsplash, Heye Jensen