What I hold limply in my fingers is soaking wet, embarrassing. The solidarity of the moment ruined in a sinus tangent–I’ve forget what I was thinking to sneeze loudly.  This is remarkable, unmarked in the seconds before it and wiped out completely in spastic exhales seconds after. My life is remarkable. I can’t stay dry and clear long enough to complete a sentence. I speak in fragments. It isn’t my most eloquent feature.  I don’t try to assume I have assailants floating around me, crawling inside and busying themselves somehow behind my swollen eyes. Instead I cover my face and walk around outside, to the points of my determination. How can I convince the chapel to let me install giant bass lines around the stage and podium? It wouldn’t take me very long to install, but–is it they’re afraid of interference?  I tell the minister, maybe something inside you will resound in a way only a wordless sermon could strike–the purifying effects of a single, quavering, echoing bass vibrating against an entire congregation, not meant to exalt but to bring all gently down to the unity of the physical world. Come down, don’t be confused by the urges you are having.  Can I offer you some water? Maybe you should sit down, take off your sweater, and let it finish running through those veins you forgot you had.  Can we forget about securing our death this morning, like a summer home exquisitely build and furnished in a flawless location, never occupied? Can you let me talk for a second? in my mucous fragments–bursts of pressure and I temporarily forget what I was implying afterwards, blowing my nose saying “excuse me, it must be something in the air”.  I’ll convince you, I’ll tell you all I know about the wars between one and two, the excuses we make at red lights, what it looks like to see a wreckage fly carried by helicopter outside the airport window, and then you will understand what I am about to propose.

 

 

 

Syncope

Please report your symptoms

To the physician in charge:

My sight is swollen shut,

Being recognizant and all that.

Recovery suggestion:

Decrease use of extremities during

Combat.

Give time to be

Feverish of the artificial overcast

Backdrop plane crash—

White tipped appliances, marble-colored water—

That sort of thing.

I can’t differentiate

Forearms from feathers

Anymore.

Please report your symptoms

To the physician in charge:

Weapons, women,

Sensitivity to bedroom mirrors,

Something crusty on the floor,

Loss of balance crossing streets,

Memory loss at red lights.

Sudden uncontrollable desire

To drink from hands.

Involuntary use

Of lower jaw.

Waking up again,

And again.

And again.

And again.

Suggested dosage:

Calling from the back of the nave

Wasp nests sound like

Splinted wood.

Take two on impact

With meal.

Shortness of breath

While pulling out chairs.

Please report your symptoms

To the physician in charge:

Becoming a backlit threshold,

Shining kitchen stucco,

The assaultive qualities of

Wool. Now,

I contend with a certain

Absorption. There is

Nothing I can do

But wait for an official

Report.

Not as ribcages

Quaver. Not as refraction

Multiplies. Not even man,

Reaching out towards

Woman, feels the pressure

Suddenly

Drop.