Morgan Downie
Two Poems
exsanguinate
it slicks the floor
dark as coffee
dense as tar
the dulled red
of dimmed fire
the stilled stink
of blood unnatural
he is bathed in it
an unrippled vessel
in its glaze
hair darkened
eye sockets pooled
with his body’s
rejected iron
somewhere a nurse
is crying
we thicken the air
with hypochlorite
slake the floor
with bloodied mops
send the man
cleansed
to his rest
his ears filled
with our rough jokes
and the assurance
that at least
it was quick
and not the worst
death
any of us
had seen
at the end
it’s so nice
to have a man here
and in that one sentence
you tell me
of all those nights
when you were
who you were
before
and of all
that i could be
if only i was
with you
away from
your monitored
and failing
heart
that spendthrift
organ you shared
without a care
with so many
i take
your hand
in my hands
and we pretend
that you
are still healthy
and i
am still human
Mo
rgan Downie is a visual artist who also writes short stories and poetry. He is a keen collaborationist and cross disciplinary practitioner and this underpins many of the themes of translocation in his practice. His published work includes stone and sea and distances, a Romanian- English photopoetry collection. He works in healthcare.