he hankies clean ...

This was a difficult read. You, however, wrote it effortlessly. I'm glad he has you for a friend. Bless you. ~A "You begin saving the world by saving one person at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics." Charles Bukowski

........... There is a great space of emotion here I fail to put into words again , as always you know I love your words .......... to be with someone when the nasties take over their body ... is a true gift of yourself to another ... Love Jayne x

........... There is a great space of emotion here I fail to put into words again , you know I love your words .......... to be with someone when the nasties take over their body ... is a true gift of yourself to another ... Love Jayne x

I have been reading and rereading this poem for a few days. It is a masterpiece. It speaks of such things we do not speak. It speaks of discretion. It speaks. Brian

Phlegm may have a kind of status in certain small "ancients" circles which remember the Greeks and the four humours, but for most it is a topic rarely mentioned and quickly dispatched, typically in a kind of semi-ribald mocking humour. It borrows that second kind of status from our etiquette trainings attached to early childhood, when we were taught to hide snot and farts (our family name for the later was "body-burp" or "grapefruit"; that the former has become an associate of etiology is not entirely an imaginative stretch, while the same is not so readily said of the latter). Ah, what we are to learn so that we may unlearn. This is a terrific, so sensitive, but in your face, treatment of a taboo topic. We all self sensor, in the case of phlegm, either due to that training past referred or out of practical belief in the withdrawal of the readers from explicit engagement with this taboo. You have chosen not to make this the shunning which our habit, with little grace, demands. Early in this decade, I was hospitalized four months, with much doubt about my prospects. The experiments to save me near killed me often enough. For one rather extended period of a dozen days, I was on the intensive care unit, watching a comatose man across the foot whose eyes were always open. Some medicines upset my stomach, which was doing poorly already, others the bowel. Almost every person can hear-out the occasions of near death: the times of urgent moments, for which I was usually conscious. What they cannot hear-out are the times when I as vomiting and defecating concurrently, without control over either. This fraction of the story almost invariably gets suspended. But it is a fraction that merely leads. For there were two men, some would call orderlies, who came promptly each time - I could not move - gently rolling me first one way, then the other, removing this wet air-saturating mess of bedclothes and garments, and gently, so endearingly gently, bathing me and replacing all. I asked each man to come near the bed when I was recovering, the last element being pedestrian capacity. And told them how cherished they were for their labour and, without being rude, their endurance of these meannesses with calm, and soothing and care; not attributes quickly ascribed to men. It was the least that could be done. That ill, you tend to fall in love with every stripe of humanity with a gentle hand. There are not the same social restraints on emotions which would, in other circumstance, be considered odd or suspect or whathaveyou. Of the forty or so doctors, and the 100 or so nurses, which I spent extended times with, many became private heroes, and loves of the mind. My absolute favourite, a black nurse, Julia, who caused my suffering to dramatically reduce, has been purloined from my marriage fantasies (pre-Olya) by your overzealous American hospital officials. Ah, but phlegm. Using the words belonging to often beleaguered or even callous occasions (hole, wet, fleshy, sputum, tagging my cheek on the flyby), you, Charles, have given permission to a poem about orderliness, about love, discretion, kindness, restraint, endurance and friendship. It has the shape of love and loveliness made from the garish. This, in my mind, is a masterwork. I thought I would tell you the reasons for my opinion. I won't test the software trying to give you another five stars. Brian P.S. In addition to the above, it morphs nicely into a metaphor response to occasions of friendly liberties.