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It is dark and night outside my window,
and in the soundless, lit confines of my
room I sit at my old, ivory desk

cheerless

and anxious with dread for what the rest
of another night may bring.

My ostomy bag, an abhorrent creature that
hugs precariously on one side of my abdomen,
covers my raw and fleshy stoma underneath.

Against my desire, the stoma continually oozes
feces and waste

like a sewer into the ostomy bag, which,
every seven days or so ruptures its seal
and transforms into

a stinking and rancid cabbage

whose fetid odor refuses to stop emanating
until the entire, offensive beast is immediately
uprooted from my body.

So, I sit at my ancient, ivory desk, writing
these cherry-picked words to express

the anxiety and the doldrums
of another night;

and the lonely, isolating, embarrassing, humiliating,
ego-wiping, self-esteem killing, mind-numbing,
soul-shattering, universal, all-embracing,
omni-present

stench

that weekly offends my nostrils and fills my lungs
because of a thoroughly used-up ostomy bag that
needs to be removed immediately

like an old, decaying vegetable
that has outlived its
freshness--

It is another cheerless night in the same, old
cheerless space:

the nose-blistering smell, however, is only for
another night...


------
"Good verse, like art, is difficult."

--ngoc m. nguyen, aka "poembender"




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Comments

The following comments are for "Another Night of Dread"
by Apple

ostomy
not to mention when the flange falls off long before the week is up...

or a double stoma where you can't cut out a fit big enough...

certainly, as your poem says, waiting the whole night for someone else to change the colostomy is the worst. Not being able to change one's own colostomy (either "ever", or "anymore") causes waits that are difficult to endure.

"and the lonely..." : best of all stanzas to me, because generally, folks don't verbalize this as I'm doing the cleanup, and I tend to forget what it actually feels like for the person.

I also like "hugs precariously" as it describes exactly, in two words, how an ostomy bag and a now irregularly-shaped abdomen actually appear.

I see very few poems about colostomies.

Thank you for this one.

( Posted by: windchime [Member] On: June 29, 2012 )

Changing the Bag





This casts a whole new light on Changing the Bag.

Makes me feel quite fortunate to be in Good Health.

Eric

( Posted by: Fairplay [Member] On: June 29, 2012 )

liberating, contained
it begins as if the reader will observe different levels of confinement. And you do capture that in enough visual express. But then half way through I sense that the narator has taken power over that which seemed to at first have power over him. In that sense there is some liberation to enjoy amidst all the decay, stench and putrid decriptions.

Very vivid writing, I would say probably even offensive to some (weak stomachs)

And then, in the end, narator has full domination over his condition "is only for
another night..."

Nice work

BW

( Posted by: BWOz [Member] On: June 29, 2012 )





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