Neurospicy
Sometimes it’s nice
to be neurospicy,
to give into the Hyde
inside the Jekyll,
to release the prickly
beast that feels so tired
of the tight space
in which he’s been pacing,
tied to the short leash,
bottled and contained
by medications made
to enforce the rules
of the neurotypical brain.
Some Classes
Some classes need you
to be angry with them.
They will insist on it
in a million little ways.
They will talk over you
until you are red in the face,
say I’m sorry, and then
they will do it again,
literally the second you are
tempted to forgive them.
They’ll look for the ways
to say you’re irrelevant,
ignoring you directly and
dramatically to your face.
Playing games, watching film,
earbuds in, pulling faces
across the room as if to say,
Look at all the things that
can fill my day that are not you.
Why waste these days engaged
in the ways you want, you have
clearly planned for me to engage?
Why take any path you or
anyone wants me to take?
And honestly, maybe I wouldn’t
care if there was just one
mechanism, a lever to pull that
would send the worst offenders away.
But we’re here to teach them,
every one of them, every day.
New
The you who was you yesterday
no longer exists, truly, no matter
how successful or lost, disappointing
or wondrous. That you is gone,
swallowed like wine from a chalice
or poison from a cup. And the you
who just read that is gone, too,
leaving only the you who is you, fading
every moment, as people tend to do.
I think; therefore, I am
A pencil in my hand,
pressed between my fingers
and thumb. I feel it there
as I scratch across the paper
and pause to listen to
the words that seem to come
from somewhere both me
and not me, and the pine desk
is solid, and my shoulder
solidly aches and has, I think,
for days. For Heaven’s sake,
I think, of course this is real,
but maybe I am mistaken.
Who knows what to make
of this red and worn sweatshirt,
the shadow the desk lamp creates,
my cold hands, the hum-um
of the washing machine and fan
in the room I assume is still there?
Fantasy Dance
It’s been a while now
since we danced–
hands on hips or shoulders
or holding other hands–
and I can’t help but think
how nice it would be
to find ourselves tentatively
reaching for each other,
experiencing a gradual
release in a dark room
under flying lights
and inside the thrumming
music that dances itself,
leaning into us as we
lean into it and feel
the vibrations, our
Palpitations, and that catch
in our throats when we
fall into our lingering glance.
Worn, Reworn
I would go exploring
on a green and stony trail.
Downward, downward
to a time when I
was so much smaller,
eight or nine,
into cool limestone and
the prickle-smell of pine,
and the thump-thump
of my steady steps
that pull back and
release forward, fighting
and chasing the slope,
deeper into the wonder
of a remembered world
I’ve suddenly never touched before.
Life
Let’s say I’m my own
experiment, some attempt
my consciousness makes
to understand
itself, the world, goodness
or evilness.
The Why, The Truth,
the dot on the i of this life.
An experiment attempted
through the clumsy,
scratched, dulled, and limited
instruments of my body.
And let’s admit that
the experiment is flawed–
awash in uncontrolled-for
variables, hopelessly
subjective and forever
ongoing with only
the squishiest hypothesis
to drive its questions.
How could this experiment
be measured, understood, trusted?
And how could it matter?
What rational mind would propose
or engage in this work?
What sentient creature could
ever do anything else?
