A kid playing hide-and-go-seek with my pals
I was half in, half out of a closet when a sliding door
smacked me between the eyes and a knot sprung
like Athena from the head of Zeus.
The wound - a fragile entanglement
of tentacled neurons - never healed.
I cannot cross my center line
need both hands to draw a circle
keep my balance. Done in by diagonal lines
vexed by the letter “x” I am ambidextrous.
My brain like co-joined twins who survive
unless they are separated, is always suspended
caught in that irreversible moment
Icarus flying and falling, a pile of iron filings
quivering at the magnet’s approach
and death by polar organization.
On one side, the head of Orpheus
afloat and still singing, all the music
in my headphones, my bare feet buried
in warm beach sand near the prickly pears
and on the other, war and grief
dust and bombs and decapitations
raging with raised fists and clenched teeth
each struggling for air
toward a blue-eyed apocalypse
that ends in sweating it out
a three day migraine, and this poem.
Next: Whip of Color
