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.

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