Hot Mics and Immortality by Todd French

“With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality,” Putin agreed.

“Predictions are, this century, there is also a chance of living to 150,” Xi replied.

Psalm 37:27-29
New International Version

(27)Turn from evil and do good;
then you will dwell in the land forever.
(28) For the Lord loves the just
and will not forsake his faithful ones.

Wrongdoers will be completely destroyed[a];
the offspring of the wicked will perish.
(29) The righteous will inherit the land
and dwell in it forever.

The two tyrants were talking about immortality-the benefits of
Organ harvesting-I mean, Putin and Xi, during China’s WWII
Victory Parade. It played out like some surreal scene from a
Sub-Bondian thriller bankrolled by The Middle Kingdom. Once
Past the outrage at the presumption, the arrogance and the inhumanity,
I pictured hospitals and donor pens, overseen by monstrous physicians,
Voices smooth as sea-lion neoprene, holding out no hope of healing,
Gauging the rate of diminishment of unwilling donors, chary souls
Trapped into charity while beaming nurses emptied the vases, changing
The cobra lilies for dewy pines while med-screens revealed stats in
Isotope green. Who, purloined and plucked up in Ambulance Time,
Dragged from their home, their village, found their Procrustes Bed
In Beijing, chiseled away to fit it while the white-coats wafted in and
Out, examining the stitches and sutures, replacing the clamps,
Masking the miasma of bone-saw bouquets and soiled bandages with
Floral scents and medicinal salves-who found their Procrustes Bed in
Beijing, Guangzhou, or Tianjin-palpitating like plated fish between
Surgeries-dreams gone to dust-grit, eyes rolling like beeves before
The abattoir bolts? Who was in the middle of a kiss, a recollection,
A church service, the return from a government store, when you
Were taken-ghosted away, hurried away to the wards where the
Doctors stalk from bed to bed, plucking morsels from the mud?

Gliding between the tubes and drips, the nurses replace the dewy pines
With Albany pitcher plants and vacuum the dead flies up from the tiles,
And switch the channel on the TV.

Outside the rooms in the prison wards, the guards go back and forth,
Their tread heavy as pangolins, faces introspective as owls,
Checking the latest Taylor Swift and Kelce Travis engagement updates
On their phones.

“With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality,” Putin agreed.

“Predictions are, this century, there is also a chance of living to 150,” Xi replied.

Beasts with their backs to heaven, 
Following a trench of blood, padding from kill to kill,
Mouths caked with gore, dumb to mercy 
and compassion-soul-chemos successful
In reducing the divine part to a nodule no bigger than an acorn
Tell us that God will extend your lives, rub out the date 
(and just as it is appointed for man to die once, And after that the judgment) When the Golden Hour appears like the rutilance of an
Autumn sunset spilling bloodshine on a wheaten field, 
Will He make an exception?
In your cases (ignore the cries of your victims the prison cellars where men 
and Women scream themselves hoarse), and say live and scheme, 
You beasts moving
Through forest humus, following a trench of blood, 
You makers of air-masticators,
You war-lovers and oppressors 
Undergoing soul-chemo-having Godness atrophied
To gallstones will you live forever (live forever), 
Turtle-spur your way from
(and just as it is appointed for man to die once,and after that the judgment) The Judgment of the Living God
Coelacanth your way to the unplumbed dark of the 
Deeps off the coast of Tarshish? 
Will you two share a timeshare where the writ of command 
(the yawning grave the funereal urn the monument’s marble) 
Does not run-where God never goes (live forever live forever!) 
And you can mark your days in the rings of Methusaleh, 
The bristlecone pine, or Sarv-e Abarqu, the Zoroastrian Sarv?
(there is a world)

"With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality," Putin agreed.

"Predictions are, this century, there is also a chance of living to 150," Xi replied.

(There is a world beyond this one where justice runs like river torrents)

Putin: will you be Koshchei the Deathless & hide your “death” in a needle in a
Duck egg in a duck in a hare in a chest, the chest chained up & buried on the
Island of Buyan?
(where men, women and children are not confined to their Procrustes Bed)

Xi, will you be as the Eight Immortals, your visage rendered on a celadon vase?

(where)

(preliminary dissection of the great vessels of the abdomen and chest is carried out so that the organs to be removed can be core cooled in situ with cold intra-aortic and intraportal infusates once the aorta had been cross clamped at pre-planned levels)

(this never happens)

(although the technique has been adopted as a worldwide standard, it has certain disadvantages when the liver is one of the grafts or when the kidney team insists upon extensive preparatory activities. Dissection of the hepatic hilar structures tends to be time consuming, particularly if an inexperienced surgeon is at work)

(There is a world beyond this one where the evil)

Are Elijah’s horses of fire stamping in the stables, waiting to bear you away?
Will God take you up as He did Enoch?
Will He say: “shadow, go back ten paces.”
Is there an Ezekiel Wheel to whirl you upwards to the Third Heaven?

(are called to account)

Job 14:14-16

New International Version:
(14) If someone dies, will they live again?
All the days of my hard service
I will wait for my renewal[a] to come.
(15) You will call and I will answer you;
you will long for the creature your hands have made.
(16) Surely then you will count my steps
but not keep track of my sin.

Todd French is a Christian Conservative Church Deacon. He enjoys poetry, literature, history, the arts, and bird-watching. He resides in Fountain Valley, CA, in Orange County with his wife and three daughters. His work encompasses a variety of themes, including Current Events.