The ceiling, then appears the sky
Thoughts of Death, I don’t know why
The trolley’s still and spiritless
I wait for action, querulous
I hear the pounding of my heart
I smell the analgesic start
Paranoia makes me faint
My fingers tingle from the wait
The bullets shot, I feel so numb
Intoxicatingly dumb
Coagulating faces cluster
A smirking hum is all I muster
My heavy tongue an oral mace
My brain kneels down upon my face
Cryptic visions moan and swim
And then I mumble I love him
The anaesthetists’s laugh liquifies
And I try to mumble my goodbyes
Published 1999
I wrote this the night before I had an operation in my early 20s. Feeling anxious about the impending surgery I naturally put pen to paper as I often do and within an hour this came out. It’s not perfect but it’s my early work and was submitted in a portfolio of work while at University. I sent it to a publisher who subsequently chose it for an anthology of poems,
What do you think?