Expert Opinion
“pharmaceutical hacks all agreed selling heroin to children calmed them down
helped them focus"
From Rex Butters
from the 1890’s to 1912
your medical establishment
top scientists
public health officials
the board of education
Bayer & St. Joseph’s
pharmaceutical hacks all agreed
selling heroin to children
calmed them down
helped them focus
quieted coughs
harmless
non-addictive
beneficial
when I was a kid
your medical establishment
top scientists
public health officials
industry experts all agreed
smoking tobacco
non-addictive
harmless
no cancer link
beneficial
white lab coated doctors
hawked their recommended brands
when I was a kid
your medical establishment
top scientists
the board of education
and the school administration all concurred
we should play with hunks of asbestos
easy to mold
never explodes when fired
cheaper than clay
no cancer link
harmless
survives the kiln
safe as lead toys
when I was a kid
your medical establishment
top scientists
public health officials
nuclear engineers
shoe store owners and parents agreed
installing ineptly shielded
x-ray machines in shoe stores
christening untrained shoe salesmen
x-ray technicians
guaranteed a better fit
for kids’ Poll Parrot and
Buster Brown shoes
frivolously frying feet
storewide open exposure
to x-ray radiation
safe
harmless
no cancer link
beneficial
when I was a kid
your medical establishment
top scientists
defense department officials
public health officials
the board of education all agreed
if an atomic bomb detonates
in the schoolyard
closing the window curtain
getting under our desks
duck and cover
would save our lives
radiation neutralized
they bell alarm drilled us regularly
threat eliminated
when I was a kid
your medical establishment
top scientists
public health officials
state and local government officials agreed
burning garbage
in concrete backyard incinerators
even plastics
every night
across the San Gabriel Valley
waking and walking and living
in a burning toxic brown cloud haze
was safe
harmless
no cancer link
no smog alerts
no respiratory threat
lazy P.E. kids coughing ordered to run harder
my lungs raw and scarred
for generations
your medical establishment
community and religious leaders
local officials
and human traffickers agreed
before anesthesia and asepsis
White Doctors
White Mengele Medical Students
dissecting
observing
experimenting
on live African specimens
soliciting
black body parts
exploiting
exterminating
subjects of theses
like prisoners and the condemned and the poor
and the institutionalized and the orphans
and indigenous peoples
important for medical progress
develops tools and techniques
serves humanity through science
advances crucial knowledge
noble individual sacrifice
for the good of the whole
necessary
to save lives
it’s 2015 and your medical establishment
top scientists
public health officials
state and local government officials just agreed
prescribing heroin to children
beneficial
harmless
non toxic
not addictive
awarding the opiate pushing Sackler family
$14 billion and a Fortune 500
gold throne
richer and deadlier
than any other drug
cartel on earth
ever
in every case/in each era
anyone disagreeing with
these deadly lies
was ridiculed
shunned/shamed
as anti-science
superstitious
marginalized
satirized
diminished
disrespected
dismissed
and pitied
while now
44 people die
every day
from prescribed
painkillers
declared safe
by your medical establishment
top researchers
public health officials
500 die a day from medical mishap
in a health care system ranked 37th
by the New England Journal of Medicine
the lowest among colonizing nations
and the most expensive
as naturopaths
homeopaths
acupuncturists
and herbalists
with no bodies piling up daily
are harassed
bullied
labelled quacks
investigated
over regulated out of business
and the self-congratulating smart ones
continue to fill
the graveyards of expert opinion
Rex Butters
Rolling hills and wheeling crows, a voluptuous valley under sunset bloody clouds, night coyote pup trots, mouth full of rabbit or cat, pollinators buzz the trumpet creeper, windy, cold.
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