Hip Replacement

"Best operation to have," the doctor says, as he turns on his chair,
makes a slow spin, like swivel hips, and I begin thinking of hips –
how being hip, swaying hips, hip-hop, bring on the image of youth,
and wonder why it is said to be the first body-part to go?
Could it be convenience? An easy-sell to prospective patients –
buy a titanium metal hip, get screws put in, be rejuvenated so your
birthdays are a celebratory "Hip Hip Hooray" and you can dance again
with the best of soul-sure hipsters. "Hip" is not always currency:
look at the hippies – now a disparaging, dated term – they would
rather be "green" "conservationists" than dubbed hippie tree-huggers.
The bus-stops where I used to see the paper-bag bottoms
hugging their hip-flasks and open-mouthed bottles;
or the rosehips we come to only after our recovery systems slow down.
Now we are sold on having a hip replacement.
Nobody says "Guard your hips", only "Watch your head" "your back".
Hips seem as hidden as brains, and doctors take the authority:
"Trust", "Believe", "Try this", "A great new product", sounds like the
shonky speech of a pick-up merchant, a hipshot seller thinking of
only their own hip-pocket. What happened to the Hippocratic oath?
Why are hipbones said to "break", "wear out" faster than anything else?
Our hippocampus has a lot of thinking pathways before we take the hip-op.
To get all the hard facts and case tales from more than
metal-bone peddlers. Is the very leap in the dark, like shaking our cage,
like swinging our hips, like thinking young – already being hip to it all?