Poly, sex, some gender

content/gender/surgery/05.md

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+<div class="verse">I'm no good at images, only words,
+and yet for days after surgery,
+as anesthesia and countless
+    milligrams, milliliters, millions of
+drugs leave my system,
+I'm lousy with visions,
+each lousy with meaning.
+
+I lay in bed, unable to move,
+struggling to keep my eyes open;
+I know that if I close them,
+    I'll be lost, I'll be lost, I'll be
+mired in waking dreams,
+coherent visions with all the logic
+of that paler side of consciousness.
+
+Perhaps the veil here
+is still too thin and vague,
+the pool too clear, the monsters too scary
+    too lean, too mean, too hungry, or
+perhaps I was too close to death
+to come away totally unscathed,
+too close to completely survive.
+
+    It's as though, laying here,
+    stinking of hospital,
+    I'm seeing emotions play out,
+        Scene after scene, scene after scene,
+    anxiety shown in heaps of discarded entrails,
+    hope in the ceaseless ratcheting of gears,
+    determination in the marching of feet.
+
+If I were an artist, perhaps
+I could hope to touch these images,
+but as it is, every word falls short,
+    too vague, too inexact, too tight to
+hope to explain something so vast
+by the very act of attempting to reproduce;
+I can only hint from the margins.
+
+That poetry can accomplish what prose cannot
+in its economy of motion
+is attractive to me, here in recovery -
+    so tired, so tired, so tired - so
+maybe I can hope to express the dire import
+of these visions dancing behind closed lids,
+or at least remind myself on rereading.
+
+Even now, a week out,
+I'm starting to lose touch with the visions,
+I can almost touch them if I squint,
+    lie real still, don't move now, but
+even then, a shadow of the substance...
+I'm starting to consign to memory
+that which was probably memory to begin with.</div>