the machine

once again, it isn't really metaphorical

The machine
eats the injured
and feeds the industry.
accountants,
lawyers,
insurance adjusters,
medical professionals,
colluding
to take from the
vulnerable
and distribute
the leftovers
when they are through.
and her,
in Gucci suit
and Jimmy Choos,
asks me
with her sharpened pencil
ready,
is everyone out to get me?
"Of course not," I say.

Author's Note

look not for a hidden meaning.

Reviews

[barleygirl]

Good point you're making in your message here. It kinda makes me cringe to read this, you've painted the details with such clarity. Your observations become more & more specific as the poem goes along, until the final scene is like a movie (I can see it perfectly).

[Lyn Anderson]

Thank you. So much. This experience with personal injury law has forever changed my perception of many things. Including the people who work to feed its incessant greed. None of it is actually necessary, if insurance were fair to the people who pay the premiums when they are hurt and broken.

[Papaya]

Sad that so many profit from pain and hardship.
I mean, look even at how search engine optimization works for advertising here on this site.
You write a poem about injury of something painful and personal and next to the poem you get an ad for personal injury lawyers. Talk about adding insult to injury...

So much is machine driven, metaphorically or not.

[Lyn Anderson]

I have landed right in the middle of a place I thought I would never be. Thank you for the review and the understanding.

[Papaya]

You're welcome. What do they call these moments? Character building? You do have loads of character.

[Lyn Anderson]

I suppose I shall have to go with that. There is nothing else.

[LastMonth]

Wow. You threw me straight to Pink Floyd/The Metropolice.

And that's a great thing.
One of the best bands of all time.
One of the best movies of all time. (1927, Germany.)

Some see the Machine as a movie as one of the big, red signs of a culture wounded, troubled and damaged enough for Nazi Germany to emerge.

Here's a bit, edited to combine the two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AY09DJkQMY

You write 'This isn't really metaphorical'.
That's the sad and painful part about your poem.

[Lyn Anderson]

Thank you for that, and for looking at the broader picture.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

paranoia runs rampant---and i think we subconsciously, as poets, write metaphorically even when we don't---

we are all technology's children...and real which is so sublime, has toed the line and lost...now we don't even know who or what we are anymore.

significant write---you push buttons.

[Lyn Anderson]

Personal injury law is a hideous machine. I don't know what it is like in the States, except probably bigger, and badder. We don't get enormous settlements here. But whatever we get, everybody else gets rich on our backs. Why else would one person get three assessments for the same thing by three experts that all say the same thing? That way we can pay three people instead of one for the same opinion.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

oh geez, terrible here, all the ambulance chasing lawyers---suits filed for every little thing---and the ties look awful with the suits, by the way...

[Lyn Anderson]

Here's the sad part, though, If the insurance had a chart, the diagnoses, and offered a reasonable settlement at the outset, the injured could get on with our lives. Instead, we are forced into endless rounds of examinations and inquisitions, as if our doctors, who have taken oaths, cannot be trusted, and in the meantime, we go further in debt as we struggle to recover. This of course, adds to our pain and suffering law suit to force an even bigger settlement out of the offending party. When all most of us want is to pay our therapy and our bills, and get on with our lives.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

amen to that. we just want to get on with it...