I was a warrior in Iraq and Afghanistan

A warrior against death

Piecing together the bits of gristle and bone

Running out into the haze of explosive powder and death

Titrating mixtures to ease pain

Bringing blessed sleep

We were closer to our patients,

Closer to God​​

Than to...

Never the soldier

With the flag

Draped over my heart,

I looked for the enemy

Diligently

In every bloody cavity

I peered into bullet holes

Of eleven year old

Taliban fighters,

Down the dissected gash

Of a known Al Qaeda operative

Split lengthwise by a Hellfire missile,

Through...

You hang over the entrance to my tent

Pale couldn’t even describe you

Gritty ashy gray

Like volcanic eruption from Mt. St. Helens

There is no blood

No pool at your feet

No trickle off your fingertip

There is no sound

The eerie quiet of heavy snow on a country night

Shaking ear...

The intensity of the cold

Presses in on my body,

A physical force

Like a vice.

Two or three breaths up through the sinus

And my brain is frozen,

Thought slows,

Sensation is hazy.

All I know

Or have ever known

Is the pressure

Of the polar vortex.

How do I explain cold this inte...

An arm

Firmly Grasping

Pulling me from the wreck of my sweet little black Matrix—

Now mangled little boat

Of compassion

Rescuing my family

Shipwrecked in a sea

Of explosions, collisions, foreclosure and Despair,

“I’ll get that electric bill for you

And oh by the way I have a tu...

I always thought of humans as an integrated organism. All of our parts: mind, heart, body, indelibly working together until death; the identity and placement of each block critical to the function of the whole human being.

War tore through my life like a massive explos...

Hunger Is My Friend.

The empty

Hollowness of it

Fueling

A measured flow

Of adrenaline,

Sharpening senses

So that I can hear

More acutely

Changes in the multi-tonal

Beat of my patient’s heart,

Like the deep croaking of an old bullfrog,

RrrrBttt 

RrrrBttt

Monitor the w-h-o-o-s-h,...