The Examination
Listless images swirl up from tangled seaweed.
Instead of going home to study
a youth stayed on at a topless bar.
This reoccurring nightmare is a parody,
a Dahliesque floor show of every
melting, pants down moment.
Unschooled for future-shock, ill-equipped
for long forgotten questions;
scruffy owls hoot in an empty lecture hall
as a mind reacts with a jittery dread.
A lost post-graduate thesis rides on a city bus,
passengers sit on it as they come and go;
the manuscript is deeply buckled
with butt cheeks.
No time to revise the unprepared.
Dimples of anxiety indent a head trip.
Despondency envelopes.
At any moment,
eyes will open above a pool of sweat,
then blink stupidly
as they have done - often and repeatedly
for the last 45 years.
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2021
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