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The Absence Epic, 2
9.
The zephyr came, blew the breeze into the flame,
the searing halo I cannot put out – it knows me,
how my wrist is held by the hands of petit mal dames
playing tricks, sprinkling embers on my ear and nape
The wind and the fire crown made me a wicker man
made from sticks of an origin that, had I known existed,
I would have thrown into the sea, along with my body,
but the omens never help – they always want a sacrifice
10.
Too small, the pills fall away under the stove,
My stomach numb, it gnaws and churns
But all I feel are my knees scraping on the tiles,
My arm reaching – clean, dirty, depending on
How my skin reacts, or if my arm will light on fire
I sense them and let the panic subside
They are in my hands and I am safe for now
The slow damage is eating away at me already
The pills are on my desk now – they are already gone
11.
An instruction manual –
First, let me go, you know
my struggle and need
no obstacle for the writhing
Second, when I am turned
to the side, hope to god
I remember I can make it
through the next few hours
Third, my heart is a knot
tightening from the absence –
I will loosen it, do not worry,
She will come eventually
12.
There is no water here and I am still drowning,
sound of voices muffled in and out by the wake
I am passing through choppy consciousness
treading thoughts, barely, lying and floating
words between polite dinner and brief liquor
My lungs are filled with panic and swimming
to sure smiles and standing, what my legs
refuse to do, are meters away from rest
13.
I fell on the subway on route to a party
chatting with a woman against a pole
The aura formed the swell in my head,
my body is surfing on the turns of the train
The idea of my location is irrelevant now,
the direction is a hope I do not pass out
She keeps talking, I stammer, I-
-I-
-I-
Wipe out
Here comes the EMTs
14.
I sank and felt the mind blast
Maybe this would be the last,
Or not, who knows – the tank
Is empty, where I think, grow
fantasies and the average shrinks
This crash of faulty brain staggers,
A battle of flash fires on grey matter,
Home to silent pains while I assault the
Absence, until I tire, barely breathing
And then, seething, return to the fray
15.
My sick head spills out the boundless ambitions in my dreams
face down, profound and abstract, a thousand years a second
shattered when I am awakened by your attacks. I need sleep,
take in Nyx’s breath and whirl in the night’s missing pieces.
I am not alone in the bed – the absence, the complexity
make a trio of nightmares and verges of night terrors
so predictable, I want to snuff them with all my pillows
but they leave, as always, lying to me they won’t come back.
I want my dreams unending, and to this day miss its haze.
The Absence Epic, 1
I decided that, this year I would make the attempt of running the National Poetry Writing Month gauntlet. I have something that is helping the journey – my seizures.
Short story: I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder in early 2009. I have it under control luckily, but I do have the occasional bouts of absence seizures. When those started coming, sometimes I’d jot down whatever the hell my clearly messed-up brain was coming up with.
As the years have passed, I’ve decided that one day I would write those pieces into something larger. At its current incarnation, I am calling it The Absence Epic. I’ve posted the first week-plus’ worth of poems (0- 8) on Instagram, Tumblr, even the old DeviantArt daily. However, I decided it would be here where I would put the poems weekly. So, here is the first week. I have no idea where this will go, and how many of these will actually stay in their current forms.
0.
In my dreams, forged from mother’s stories of that day,
I see pieces of the infinite, supernovae and flares,
Planets I did not know the names of at that time.
As a child, I gave them titles of my choosing.
Now, when I wake up, I know their true names,
Losing all memories of the ones I gave them.
I wish I could remember their names every morning.
1.
I am litter on the floor, eyes open,
Bent, twisted turned as a crumpled can.
The only thing that holds me are drunks
called friends and freaked out passersby.
There is no stopping the absence,
the fear of staying asleep in my mind
forever with the memory of a mind on fire,
a pain deep, rending me comatose.
2.
How do you give a voice to a silent rumble? Do you fall,
convulsing, attempt and hold it together, failing,
is it
…just…wait…
…stay here and grab my hand…
…this absence is all I have left.
This absence is all I can leave behind.
Please, let me leave it behind
Please –
3.
I spin out, wheels without,
feet on the ground
with no direction
I feel the pins from within
rip through the epidermis
harder than the sound
I walk in haze, mind ablaze
but stumbling is better
than giving up to delirium
4.
I met the complexity the follows me
Now that cold morning in Lima,
And it rested within me, patiently,
Waiting to be reborn, for decades
We did not shake hands, or kiss,
But I will tremble to its control
The maturing deformation,
The real pain? I feed it to this day,
As it is my new and everlasting muse –
Not the women, the anger, nor the drink,
Just the absence, and it will always be
At my side, eternal, until I blink into dust
5.
No activation response for my senses
my head is taking in cold breaths –
I cannot allow
disappointment,
a breaking point –
but the chill seeps in
and under red storefront lights, I align
my shame with growing suffocation
6.
I fear the sliver between
awareness and the great abandon
Within that crack lies a beast
that gnaws on my left arm, caressing
my head, anticipating a devouring
of my direction and spitting me out
into open neuroses, disintegrating me
I will fill that space between myself
and the crack, or the crumbling begins
7.
I should make it my muse,
its touch moving my fingers,
writing in its trembling diction
of stammers and repetition,
the quiet chant of reticence,
the hymn of failed resistance,
the melody of sweet absence
ascendant where disorder lingers,
and scattered divisions that it chooses
8.
No joy, just presence and memory,
a constant night breeding a will to drift
into the “what ifs” and “who’s to know”
that I am in persistent loss of control
and that my fears are fed powerfully
