Kidney patients 3

Maybe this is a halfway house
where a smile is a diverted denial
and a passing joke is a smoke screen to lack of hope
In the literal sense
there's such pitiful pretence in this excuse for a community it's often intoxicating

Liveliness is scant but by god given instinct
we are still living
warmed with the notion of lottery
we're taught to believe in periodic reprieve
as though it's commonplace
and the whirr of the machines echoing seconds sets the atmospheric drum roll

Their traffic light component conducting the flow of blood
emulating features of a ward before the morgue like

indicators on an Auschwitz chamber door

and
maybe it's the calm before the norm
since hell is a festival of wailing
The silence incubates violence
converted to the writing on the wall
What you don’t hear you can read
Nothing is about to change