My father loves his whiskey,
He tells me it reminds him of his home,
Nights in Dublin and Irish winters,
He danced with my mother under the moon,
Across the rivers and between the cracks,
Father do you drink to remember?
She still loves you all the same,
Oceans divided and still she remembers the barley,
All of the bar fights, and the serenades that sprouted,
Father do not be afraid,
For she still holds your heart

in 2012 i experienced an incident with a rifle. my friend spinned it around and hit me in the face. the hit was hard enough to break my nose and make me fly backwards and land on the back of my head.
after that i started having seizures. cluster seizures which mean seizures back to back. they have to be stopped by iv or i can go into status epilepticus meaning continued or back to back seizures that can **** people. there have been several times where my heart has stopped or i stopped breathing from it. its hard to live with. soooo many pills, and doctors, specialists to help diagnose me. just about a month ago i was diagnosed with tbi (traumatic brain injury) before i was diagnosed i was so upset with everything. my health my relationship, my family problems. it just piled up so i decided to numb myself with drugs and alcohol. i no longer can do that because the last time i did i woke up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. i have right hemisphere disfunction and it effects my motor skills, speech, memory, decision making, confusion, and at this point the doctors say that my memory and confusion is dementia. sometimes i try to tell myself i don't need help, im fine, i don't need anyone, or that the doctors made a mistake. but they didn't and that was proven to me today when i saw my eeg, and mri.  i have built up white matter in my brain. and it only gets worse . i can never regain anything ive lost but i can learn how deal with it and move on from now. i can never be independent in the part of just living alone. i would like to marry the man of my dreams but i don't think i want to put him through all of this. he would have to take care of me when i get sick, and i get sick often due to my weak immune system. one hit in the face and my whole body went out of whack. we also recently discovered that i have a bundle branch block in my heart which means it is a condition in which there's a delay or obstruction along the pathway that electrical impulses travel to make your heart beat. i have a dog that can smell my auras which are mild seizures like warnings that a big one will come. but he can only do so much . squeeze under my head and bark for help.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

I cut the middle fingernail of the middle
finger
right hand
real short
and I began rubbing along her ****
as she sat upright in bed
spreading lotion over her arms
face
and *******
after bathing.
then she lit a cigarette:
"don't let this put you off,"
an smoked and continued to rub
the lotion on.
I continued to rub the ****.
"You want an apple?" I asked.
"sure, she said, "you got one?"
but I got to her-
she began to twist
then she rolled on her side,
she was getting wet and open
like a flower in the rain.
then she rolled on her stomach
and her most beautiful ***
looked up at me
and I reached under and got the
**** again.
she reached around and got my
****, she rolled and twisted,
I mounted
my face falling into the mass
of red hair that overflowed
from her head
and my flattened **** entered
into the miracle.
later we joked about the lotion
and the cigarette and the apple.
then I went out and got some chicken
and shrimp and french fries and buns
and mashed potatoes and gravy and
cole slaw,and we ate.she told me
how good she felt and I told her
how good I felt and we
ate the chicken and the shrimp and the
french fries and the buns and the
mashed potatoes and the gravy and
the cole slaw too.

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

dad left
for his second tour of duty
on my third birthday

mom kept
a jar full of jelly beans
on the living room coffee table

every night
she gave me one to eat, saying
"when these jelly beans
are all eaten up,
dad will come back home"

sometimes
i would sneak another,
to help dad come home sooner

one night
the phone rang
and i watched mom
wipe away a tear
as she filled
the jar
back
up