Surgical Reflections
Days after the surgery I was not myself.
A millennium of stuttering expeditions
through metallically gleaming brain-tunnels
illuminated by a flickering
sixteen millimeter movie camera
shuttered my wandering soul.
The hospital was empty
except for one pretty nurse, and a few
demented ghosts---their exposed bottoms
gawking like beluga whales
from the cracks of ice-white gowns.
I walked the bare corridors on spindly legs
borrowed from an old horny man.
Those legs kept me chasing the pretty nurse
even though I knew the surgeon
had successfully removed my libido
and fed it to the hospital cat.
I found her as I drifted through
the intestinal coils of a prone delirium.
She stood before a brick incinerator
its iron door gaping wide.
The oven fumed, fed it seemed
by the desires of spectral dreamers.
The nurse undressed
throwing her uniform into the fire.
Blowing me a kiss
she jumped silently into the flames.
‘I must be out of my mind’ I thought.
The person who was not myself
turned, seeking a bed
where tubes dripped a steady flow
of surreal cravings.
That night I strapped a laptop to my eyes;
then tucking my tail between my legs
I wrote a love letter to the hospital cat.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2022
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