Hospital

It paints bleak pictures
with brushes dipped in you -
the terse blues
of lonely winters
spent with dying family
in the shuffling white
of rooms
where feet clattered
and death beds reeked
of sour pity,
the aching red
of desolation
looming under blankets
and propping up pillows,
stricken golds
of battered sunlight
spilled across bedpans
and oxygen tanks

and the bleached
and silver grey
of the nurse's
incontinent lies.