don’t blink at that moment
where the world stops to stare
don’t blink for a moment
as though you don’t care
keep your eyes on the prize
keep your gaze up there
where light is the brightest
and the dark elsewhere
don’t blink for a second
gaze straight if you dare
don’t turn for a minute
from that blinding glare
don’t squint, like flint
no matter how bright
at the piercing, don’t blink
and out stare the light

I'm hurt! I'm hurt! I'm hurt!
My heart is racing!
I’m so rattled,
My hands are shaking.

I’m on a bench on a cold winter night.
I would do anything to get away from this fight.
I’d rather be cold, and alone,
Than warm, and at home.

The strife! The strife! The strife!
I am drowned by my life.
My breath leaves me as tears come to me.
I don’t but I do, want someone to see me.

What am I doing?
I’m not depressed.
I guess I just write when I am stressed.

My poems show me how I feel.
I accept these feelings, then I deal,
With my thoughts,
So I can overcome this day.
After all, I know the way.

Like a time-lapse view of a melting ice cube,
or the erasure of a blackboard equation, he
disappeared from his face. All the features
remained: a head, a nose, eyes, mouth.

What melted away right at that moment
was who he was. Once a familiar relative—
now a total stranger. A being without
a story, zero associations, nameless.

She marveled at the fluidity of her
perception. The building blocks and
scaffolding of the mind just tenuous
threads, gossamer filaments.

The brain as cotton candy.  
Where others may have panicked,
raced to gather all the vanished
referents of this person, she floated

calmly in the buoyant waters of
the impersonal. She only resisted
when the reel began to play in reverse
and—feature-by-feature—this

family member re-inhabited the
body sitting across the room
from her and she could only try
in vain to forget again.