under the knife

and suddenly all bets are off---

wondering how it all summed up itself in such a way

as if the body would last forever, as if this thing that exists

to cart your sorry a*s around

would stand tall & unique amidst the wreckage of

“civilization”---

now completely vulnerable & in the hands of people

you’ve never met, your pride gets thrown to the wayside &

whatever you were before you laid down on the bed

(or were lifted upon because you had no strength to do it yourself)

seems rather irrelevant now.

 

like a wo/man stranded with no money in a country of which the

language & the culture they do not share

you walk through your experience trying to clench onto every moment

where every action is determined by others in a kind of language that

you are not familiar with

where the technicalities mean everything & behind the blue masks

they say things with their eyes often

as throw you off of the serious nature which comes with

every move.

 

the present is more present than it ever has been before &

what seems most important really is not as scary as it had been

only minutes before---

no matter the amount of money that society says you will

pay for the rest of your life

as a result of getting sick, of feeling pain, of ending up on this bed

amidst the gaze of strangers,

one fact that remains certain,

that if you were not on that bed waiting for the anesthesia & then the

slicing,

you would not be waiting for anything.

 

this procedure will prolong the inevitable &

it will place you in a group with others whose perspective

may or may not have changed as a result---

if anything, you know now more than you ever did

that it all ends up as nothing &

you are worked on like a car in a shop

so that your mere existence can implement some kind of

domino effect in the reality that comes after you cease

when all your experiences topple onto someone, something, somewhere

else,

each meaningless in its own way,

each struggling to stay afloat, to breathe,

to find another reason to laugh.