Sleep is for the body
But sleep on an infected ear is a temptation of the mind
To know the pain so obscured from passers-by
But preoccupied in the mind of the infected, so craving rest
There thrives the vicious throbbing
A pulse radiating through the cartilage
From the outer lobes to the frontal lobe
The heartbeat has turned against me
Every vessel scrawling suicides on the wall
More than antibiotics can coax
…
This is the kind of heartbreak that makes you lose faith in medicine
The eustachian balloon blown up and holding
Swollen like the lung that held the loves unsaid
To burst is to admit defeat, to pick up the pieces too great a cost
To drain is salvation I cannot afford myself
Some swirling impression hangs over
This masterpiece keeps turning sinister in vertigo
Even when the feet are still
It’s a sick dog made of wine and high
Refusing sleep for fear of never waking
…
I wrap myself in a fur I forget is still wet
Self portraits catch my eye to walk past the drunken mirror
To frighten oneself at how same it looks to crater from the pain
Than to smile at the ignorant friend
How the spine has not bent itself in two
And the eyes have not fogged in the face
But the ear can scream out
…
I walk the same house in the same clothes you held me in
And throb to remember and to hear
The white feather of your voice
Plucked from the baby bird you saved
So innocent and new, a kiss to the vernal earth
Airy like fog on the mountain
An orphaned fox playing in the midday
That’s the perfume that drips from my lobes
And falls to the backs of my hands
When I remember the way you’d wake
And say my name after a long sleep