• Broken-Down Oz

    Next time you're on an examining table,
    count the cracks on the ceiling
    to see where that dingy yellow brick road
    sweeps you away. Where Toto's barks
    lead you to a wizard who wears a poker hat,
    tipping it down to you.

    The witch ( playing doctor games ) whispers
    flying monkey nonsense in your ear
    and a munchkin nurse comes in,
    groping your breast for more lumps.

    The gruff orderly takes your pulse
    and casting his scarecrow shadow over you,
    almost reading your frightened baby blue
    Dorothy eyes like a book.
    He wasn't that literate,
    he pierced a needle into your arm
    and those thoughts of him being a good witch
    or a bad witch are lost.

    Your mind becomes a huge hot-air balloon,
    high in the sky from this magic land
    and drifting back to Kansas
    without you.

    You can't click those ruby slippers:
    cheap movie props fall apart fast
    when they're bought for a buck.
    They won't stop the house
    plummeting on your hope when you heard
    before the nurses and doctors talk
    about your cancer,
    eating away at your breasts.

    You are a mewling cowardly Lion
    as a doctor takes a knife to your bosom,
    cutting them off. It is only then in the night
    when the Snap-a-de-snap--
    of the lung apparatus hides your sobs,
    no Lollipop Guild can take away that charcoal taste.

    Even when you wake up in the morning
    with hostility casting your heart into iron
    when looking at your reflection--
    chest caving inward and bald-headed.
    You feel like a rusted Tin-man,
    but the only sex now he ever got is a 1-800 hotline.

    The Emerald City in your vision has dimmed
    and the wizard had a drawl at his poker game,
    bidding you a good-day.
    Leaving you alone
    on those piss-colored stones
    in the ******** of Oz.