Surgilube

Let’s workshop this poem about how a nurse's jerking off a patient can serve to restore our faith in the future of humanity--yes, even against the swelling tide of bureaucracy.

scent of the day: Bengale Rouge, by Papillon

First wear notes

Holy crap this is good / dirty antique feel in base but citrusy christmas-time cinnabon on the top / This is ultimate feminine baked-goods holiday scent / this is something Russian Adam wished he would have made / I would love to see the formula given to Russian Adam so he can oudify it with even more antique woodiness. / But otherwise the people who sell their Papillon to fund their chase of the overpriced artisanals (the four thousand dollar ensars and even just the Areej) are not appreciating what is under their noses. /

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*this is a quick draft of a poem based off something I saw on social media today

Surgilube

Jacking the pent up voltage out of their nethers
with clinical grip (the blanket dancing too brutally
with gooey clicks to be more than formality, titties
often popped out just at the merciful moment) 
only then to wipe down their trembling relief 
with the warm rag of classier Chinese restaurants—
CCTV footage now reveals a stable flow of nurses,
some of whom saintly enough to shush (“Ssh.
Just relax.”) the most insistent eyeball nudges 
to the bedside wallet, executing farmer compassion 
upon their helpless patients (the old man unvisited,
the young man condemned to a full-body cast
rendering every itch a call to stoicism), too many
cases for us to surrender our faith in humanity.
Too humane (cooing) to be called “heretical,”
too violent (lip-biting) to be called “tender”—
such helping hands, their Kafka-tear nerve
to pulse right under corporate fluorescence,
sustain the fragile hope that true care, empathy,
will survive bureaucracy’s psychopathic crusade
to sterilize all rawness and risk and spontaneity,
all facet of authentic interaction, so as to ensure 
a safe space smothered beneath smiley protocol,
a space right out of the dry dream of an HR officer:
where one must say “unalived” instead of “killed”;
where “honey” and “sweetheart” and “darlin”
become linguistic contraband, especially 
if uttered by those with “optics of privilege”;
where men must not gather at the water cooler, 
lest the spectral history of patriarchy be invoked;
where every office door must remain open
when one speaks even with a crying student;
where discourse must follow a call-center script
as bloodless as the wall color of anti-anxiety beige;
where offering an extra shelter blanket requires 
a four-page “Exceptional Supply Request Form”
signed by no fewer than two administrators;
where a burn-unit caretaker gets put “on notice”
for exceeding the 240 second sponge-bath limit,
the patient’s terror and need for a hand to hold 
dismissed as irrelevant to “efficiency metrics”;
where “all employees are strictly forbidden 
from bringing in outside food (including candies)
because “unauthorized communal festivities”
are liable to blindside especially “our colleagues
struggling with sustained caloric over-indexing”
(the safer replacement for “food addiction”); 
where two caretakers must always be present
to deter protocol breaches, if even just leaning in
to listen closer (which, as a known precursor
to assault, violates the personal-space guideline).

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