We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

5.10.24

Hospital Haiku, part 1

suddenly

from my hospital bed

bright moon


*


post-op

every fart

a triumph


23/9/24



bedpan –

dignity replaced

by laughter


*

anaesthetists

handsome tall dark slim –

bonus


*


‘don’t get cranky with us’

nurse at end of  night shift –

crankily


apologised later –

double shift while others

strike for higher pay


24/9/24



ultrasound 

machine woofs like a dog –

can it smell fear?


*


both arms bruised

(blood tests and cannulas)

I file my nails


25/9/24



bowel movement …

I decide I’ve written enough

excretory haiku


*


why can’t I sleep? 

I don’t tell the nurse my grief

friends recently lost


*


scant sleep 

but I see dawn again

through the ward window 


*


waiting, waiting –

 no-one tells me when 

I might go home 


26/9/24

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