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 ass 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.