Patent #9
Bubba Henson
I’m thinking about various innovations --
the removal and cleaning of body parts, say.
Your liver clothespinned, upside down,
drying like a hoarder’s Ziploc bag,
dripping the regrets of your adult life –
drug larks, procreation errors, final words in the park --
into a stainless-steel surgical pan,
plink-plink,
the fatty deposits liquified in reduction
by next-gen solvents.
Or a bloodbath for your brain,
a basting of cerebral spinal fluid --
just a wash, to caramelize the receptors --
which, as no warranty will promise you won’t happen,
have frayed at the ends --
your neural pathways to OCD (inherited),
for dissociative thinking (old news),
and musophobia (fear of mice, where did that come from,
more on that later),
unstranding themselves like black licorice
on a heat-blasted dashboard.
Now that treatment will keep you
zapping and remembering!
…ah, remembering…
Time was, when one lost a limb,
the stump was cauterized and you moved on,
learning how to write your memoirs
with your foot or tongue.
Now you can be bionic
and don a prosthesis
that some superSTEM kid designed
for a high school contest and won
because it repurposes cellophane and Ikea hardware.
Check out this dexterity! With my new AI-powered fingers,
I just plucked a poppy seed from a hummingbird’s gullet,
which, by the way,
looks like it’s due for a maxilla cleaning.
Oh, that’s not far behind.
Wildlife hygiene and beautification.
Look it up – it’s a thing –
although it will do nothing for the gut-smashed mouse (musophobia! Remember?)
that your babysitter Susie asked your six-year-old self
to finish off at the garbage pail --
put it out of its misery, go on, do it, because the mousetrap (a device for which there are 4,400 patents on record), it failed.
As did you. You couldn’t do it
and your refusal took both of your hands,
severed.
You’ve only gotten through life
by using your heart in a prehensile way.
Sign up for the do-overs! Organ refurbishments!
Costco will lead at retail! Thailand will do it cheaper!
Canada will socialize it, and the insurance industry
will choose Lindsay Graham as their spokesperson.
His organs are just screaming for attention --
they exude putrification. –
how revived the Senior Senator from South Carolina will look!
I know what you’re thinking, and yes,
a new pair if you want them –
and you can be sure Lindsay wants them --
that’s on offer for boys and girls.
New bits and pieces.
But you’ll need the next item to override
any dysmorphia or virginity mistakes –
by the way, her name was Joanne,
German-American hippy girl,
a Libra, moon-faced, juicy kisser,
who locked her bedroom door one day after school
and gave instructions while her mother banged on the door.
She slapped you once when she was drunk,
but she was your first. You regret it –
no, you love her – no, you hate her –
no, you hate thinking about it,
but don’t worry!
Coming soon are the neural pathway sets,
named for the qualities they offer –
Self-Confidence, Discipline, Acceptance,
but with sexier names like I-AM, Iron Will,
and Open Door, each rooted in the present,
and accompanied by an original soundtrack
that omits your father’s voice or lack thereof
during the game-winning triple in the championship
game that he ghosted before he permanently ghosted.
Listen, that doesn’t have to be the past, or the future
because what is a marketing promise if not a rewrite of the past.
…ah, promises
-- memory is not a promise.
It’s a neural game trail that the animals in your memory
tread on their way to what?
Water? A sharp slap on the cheek? The garbage pail?
Regardless of whether they’re hard-wired or permeable,
would you swap-out the inappropriate but strangely soothing baths,
you took with your great-grandmother when you were four,
or the solo bike ride you took in Chicago on one gray fall afternoon
when a cosmic consciousness amplified your singular loneliness
as you lost your way home?
Ah, who can say?
It’s coming, though.
Soon.
Breathe in, breathe out,
lungs so much clearer
with all that life cleaned off
from the far border of your past
to the next frontier your titanium knees take you to.
Bubba Henson is a poet living in Sarasota, FL. Following a long career in marketing, he became a 7th-grade English teacher, and it was the best thing he ever did. He works for an educational fund and has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing in Poetry from Columbia University. His poems have been published in Laughing Unicorn Magazine and The Raven's Perch, and his memoir "Being True to the Story" will appear in the December issue of Nifty Lit. He is always seeking firsthand experience with people, places, and events.