Static

I’ve contemplated your loss

In those moments when the threat

Of war overrides all known egress

*

My features would be the first to fall

For the heart cannot grasp its fatality

In the instant that it has been slain

*

Without you there is no use of perception

And if still intact I’d remove my eyes

Forcibly for their failure to incite in you

One iota of regenerative sympathy

*

My heart having been preserved

By your grace would demoralize

And I’d use its brokenness

As an excuse for all subsequent

Defamation of my moral character

*

My muse would pluck every feather

Ever incurred by your faith

Before heading south in search

Of more animate hosts

Leaving me with no means

To articulate or purge my grief

*

The world would find no aperture

With which to reenter, no fissure

Within which hope might thread

For I would have become as stone

Under the gravity

Of a more oppressive orbit

*

I would set the television to winter

That I might claim my yellow lane

Amongst the victimized dead

For there is no cell within that could

Supersede our collective existence

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Confined

For hours we lie

In a cramped room

Unwrapping

Each others secrets

Thoughts made senseless

By a fevered delivery

Endless in the pursuit

Of truth

*

You picked up

Your mask

With your coat

Hung it casually

Like a half moon

Over your darkened face

And closed the door

I knew that I would

Never see you again

Not the you

Whose hands I’d held

Against

My naked heart

*

I drank the wine

That you left

Turned the sheets down

And read for hours

The words muted

By your abiding presence

I fell asleep

Wrestling the sun,

For your

Unabridged memory

*

I have seen

Your face

In the promise

Of strangers

And sometimes

In passing.

You wear apology

Greetings eclipsed

By anxiety

Smiles diffuse

The distance between us

Extending for miles

*

I long for

Confined spaces

For words burdened

With emergency

For eyes

Burning beneath

Lowered lashes

*

Every time

You pass by me,

Hurried off

By a polite excuse

I promise myself

This is the last time

The very last time

I’ll entertain love again

Epilepsy

My memories dissipate as steam

These fits of ruthless hibernation

Identity tallied against disability

After the wreckage

Is washed who am I?

*

My limbs hold no allegiance

Heart a shiv onto which

All dreams inevitably subside

Do you find me grotesque?

Comical?

Devastating?

*

This abstinence,

Which denies all provocation

In the place of life,

A piecemeal existence

There’s nothing more

They can promise

But is it enough?

=

My personality assumes

Both caricature and villain

Impulse extinguishes integrity

The mirror condemns a smile

Worn to falsify intensity

(If I am okay will you stay?)

*

My consciousness languishes

Surrenders as a prisoner

To slumber and habituation

My pride is the deepest scar

For it cannot accede weakness

I find myself nodding in the absence

Of rudimentary comprehension

But you are too nice to declare

The shocking truth of my decline

*

Do you think I want to be seen this way

Staring blankly at a sky of copious white

Dreaming, my empty little dreams

Shivering, unreachable, a ghost?

*

This poem was the first poem I wrote about Epilepsy,  in later poems I reused a good deal of the original material. I have now rewritten the poem. I have kept those lines which do not duplicate in later work. I have added new material, simplified unnecessarily wordy phrases,  and edited out some of the redundancy. As this poem did not receive very many views (less than 5)  it seemed more sensible to remove reused material from the original.

Tainted Garden

I surface

Each morning

From a pleading warmth

Only to be

Rendered imperfect

By evasive streets

*

Behind wool collars

Chapped lips

Pass together unnoticed

Parcels of humid air

Wasted on

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