49.
‘First thing you learn is that you always got to wait.’ - Lou Reed / The Velvet Underground - I’m Waitin’ For My Man
Waiting for the Alegent Care
Doc-assist at grocery store
HI VEE
to check in and make sure
that I’m well enough to
work a CNA shift after
being sick with flu this
last weekend. And while
the quick wall-in-your-face
hot cough is gone, very
few sneezes left over the
course of an ordinary day,
and while there is nothing
about me that is contagious
(save the urgent need to
express)
I still require a doctor’s note
before going into work a half
hour from now.
In the overactive flu
season that has taken Omaha
town, I thought I could easily
slip back into work without
the AGENCY imploring for
the doc visit and note I will
need to show the AGENCY
enabling me to work a simple no
nonsense shift for a fully
functioning 93 year old man
with a heart condition yet
hardly needs assistance
with the majority of his
ADL’s
and now I sit here in this
tiny waiting room along
side the doc-assists
tiny office / sick room
just to make sure I cover
the AGENCY’S ass
at my
expense,
all the while ignoring (as best I can) the
dull heartburn pop-radio
interrupted occasionally by
young people on crackley
intercoms demanding so and so
get to when and where -
out the door of the waiting room,
100’s of tubes of various tooth
pastes
and cluttered top shelf
of tooth brushes stick up like countless
map flags on a strategic war map -
I sit here, waiting - time keeps
ticking tocking
and this whole
bothersome waste-o-time
is certain to make me late for my shift.
I’ve yet to meet or know anyone
who gives a good god damn
as I take the fictional doctor’s note
to the fictional AGENCY
so reality won’t bite them in
the bureaucratic ASS.
Wait - hurry up - wait
hurry up - wait - hurry
up - wait -
after all, slavery has
many forms
and the night
is still
YOUNG.
(November 12th, 2014)
_________
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