Thursday 5 March 2020

Poetic Parody: "AS WE NUKE IT"

                                                                                                                                                                                         
                    
POETIC PARODY (reprinted)
ORIGINAL POEM:  Jaques' Monologue, Act iii, Shakepeare's "As You Like It".
POETIC PARODY: Nucl Med Commun 2002 and Photon 2004; modified with permission of the author (G.A. Hurwitz).
SONGLINK: See also our sister blog "SILLY SONGS AND SATIRE", post #3, where this poem has been considerably modified and set to music ("The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", 1976 by Gordon Lightfoot).

PARODY COMPOSED: Giorgio Coniglio, 2013.



AS WE NUKE IT (Poetic parody)


All the world's a scan,
And all its ins and outs are Nuclear’s patients.
They have their statics, and their cine-modes,
And each head which rotates views many parts;
The PACS lists their registrations.....At first the milkscan —
Pooling of puking in the basal lungs:
Then, refluxing schoolgirl for her cysto,
With brimming bladder bright, curling her toes
Unwillingly to void: and then the scrotal —
Orchitis like fire, or a wakened Uro
Scrubbed for his torted testis:  then a bleeder,
Full of tinned cells, blood labelled in the lab,
Nil found by scopes, yet suddenly maroon-stooling,
Seeking the blip extravasation
Anywhere from antrum south:  and then, shunt-study —
Tube blocked in belly, with good CT down,
His eyes rolled back, us free-of-latex gloved,
Hakim or Pudenz bulged with fluid clear;
And so we draw it off.....The next is slotted
For the diuretic renogram,
Nephrostomy in place and pouch on flank,
His useful side, well drained by frusemide
(as we Brits say), but his big kidney’s counts
Rising again and portending trouble, no peaks
Or downturns in its curve.....Last scan of all,
That aids nocturnal transplant surgery —
Cerebral countlessness, then world-matched-donoring,   
Bank organs, yank tubes, and thank certainty.

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