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There is no need to dwell on the exterior cliche of an injured soldier, the propaganda is superficial. Civilians have only plastic green men, heavy dusty movie set costumes, and Army-of-One heroes to populate stereotypes. Keep your images larger than life, no use touching up a paint-by-number. Mine was banal, foolish, and 19; enough said.

One fence is the fraternity itself, the next is brain injury. No other way to understand but be there. A Solid-American-Made-Dashboard cracked my forehead at 45mph.
Crumpling into the footwell,
unaware that the flatbed's rear bumper
was smashing thru the passenger windshield above me
the frame stopped just shy of decapitating my luckily unoccupied seat.
Our vehicle's monstrous hood had attempted to murderously bury us under,
but the axle stopped momentum's fate and ended the carnage under dark iron.
Shards of my identity joined the slow, pulverized, airborn chaos.
Back, Deep, Gone.

Unconsciousness is the brain's frantic attempt to re-wire neurons, jury rig broken connections, the doctor's desperate attempt to re-attach, stand back and say, good enough. Essential systems limply functioned, but unessential ones were ditched. Years later a military doctor diagnosed an eventual triage: Hypothalimus disconnected from the Pituitary Gland, Executive Function damaged, long pathways for emotional regulation interrupted.

I woke up still kinda bleeding, crusty blood in my hair, a line of frankenstein stitches wandering across my forehead.   My sense of self had literally dissolved into morning dust floating in a sterile hospital sunbeam.  My name was down the hall, words and the desire to speak were on a different floor.  Life became me and also a separate me under constant renovation, a wrecking ball on one half, scaffolding and raw 2x4's the other.

Waking up in the hospital, I realized I needed help to get the blood cleaned up.   A nurse came in, largely glared at me in disregard, and quickly left… for an hour.   She returned and brusquely dropped a useless ace comb and gauze on the blanket over my feet and abandoned me again.  This was my introduction to the shame of a VA hospital.  I minced my way to the bathroom, objectively examined my face in the mirror with shocking stitches above one swollen eye.  Gingerly rinsing my hair, the water ran pink in white porcelain.  I remembered the sound in my skull between my ears when a doctor scraped a metal tool across my skull, cleaning debris before stitching.  I recalled that in the ER I was asking Is he ok, repeating it like a broken record, knowing I should stop but I couldn’t.  There was also perhaps a joke about an Excedrin headache.

It was morning, and since there was no such thing as time or purpose or feelings anymore, I wandered to the hall with my only companion, the IV pole. One side was a wall of windows, and I was, what, 10 or 12 stories up from the streets of a much larger city than where I crashed.  The hall was warm and sunny.  I wheeled my companion to a blocky square vinyl chair to sit next to a pay phone.  I didn’t have any thoughts at all, or care about it.   After about an hour my first name floated up from the void, then with some effort my last name.  It took the rest of the morning to remember I had a brother.  After lunch we resumed our post, and I spent the afternoon in concentration piecing together his phone number.  God had pushed the reset button.

Thirty years ago the doctors didn't understand head injuries; they only recognized the physical symptoms. At first there was good reason to be permanently admitted to the hospital.  My blood pressure was unstable, sometimes so low that drawing blood for tests caused my veins to collapse even with baby needles.  My thyroid had shut down completely, only jump-started again with six months of Synthroid.  I had to learn to live with crashing blood sugar and fluctuating appetite.  For years afterwards, any stress would cause arrhythmias, my heart filling and skipping out of sync, blood pressure popping my skull.  Will the clock stop this time?  

There is always at least one momentous event in every person’s life that becomes punctuation, before and after.  The other side of Before the accident truly was a different me.  I have a vague recollection of who that person may have been, and occasionally get reminders.   Before, I was getting recruiting letters from Ivy League colleges and MIT, a high school senior at sixteen.  After, I couldn’t balance a checkbook or even care about a savings account in the first place.  Before, I had aced the military entrance exam only missing one question, even including the speed math section.  They told me I could chose any rating I wanted, so I chose Air Traffic Control.  Twenty years later, I thumbed through old high school yearbooks at a reunion.   I saw a picture of me in the Shakespeare Club, not recalling what that could have been about.   On finding a picture of me in the Ski Club I thought, Wow, I guess I know how to ski.   A yellowed small-town newspaper article noted I was one of two National Merit Scholars; and in another there’s a mention of a part in the High School Musical.  

This side of After, I kept mixing right with left, was dyslexic with numbers, and occasionally stuttered with word soup.  Focus became separated from willpower, concentration was like herding cats.  The world had become intense.

(chapter 1 continues in memoir)
Ashley Haack  Jul 2014
A Pun
Ashley Haack Jul 2014
I'm so bored I could pass for a 2x4
Brycical  Nov 2012
Reckless
Brycical Nov 2012
Sometimes you just gotta smash
your laptop against the wall
Tear and gnash your your canvas,
burn your pens and paintbrush
into a colorful tye-dye fire
**** on the kitchen floor
and smash the whisky bottle
across the glass wine rack
kick a hole in that guitar
spinning with lighted matches
spinning with a numb-reckless-abandon
toppling over bookshelves
laughing like a monkey
tossing the toaster
into the bathtub
break the mirror with a head-but
and take a 2x4 to the porch light outside
smiling like a python
stomping on the oven door
taking a knife to the floor
because carpet angels are totally in
Inspired the song "Give it Back" by The Ting Tings: http://youtu.be/-EnlcP7rAlc
unnamed  Dec 2012
Azure Azure
unnamed Dec 2012
My sweet Austin Texas ecstasy, my beloved Guadalupe you
gem of the desert. Your family’s a basket-a-bigots but
******* they drink for miles and how near they are to my
heart. This heat’s a drug I swear it. Let's swim in that hole
in the bedrock between two rivers. That'd be nice: me and
you and mobs of Westlake High sophomores with their
blue-raspberry bikinis, a hundred Teen Vogue magazine
covers lined up on the grass like a set of bad church pews.
Imagine that whitewash of a crowd, you and me so alone in
that big static it's better than private. Let’s punch brick, peel
back our knuckles and watch’em clot in the sun. **** gauze,
we’re goin’ to a punk show. I’m puttin’ on short sleeves,
goin’ on parade, gunna flaunt my cigarette burns like a Cadillac:
I want those dorks at the Mohawk to look and love me like
they love gore. I’m gettin’ my black-eye ribbon tonight.
We’re in the Chaos in Tejas show, darlin’, put on Crazy Spirit
and bring your 2x4: skinheads ain’t jumpin’ themselves.
Let's get medicated, hunny, let's get saved. I love watching
Austin bleed out into the sand every dusk. Love the musicians
sailing out grimy and frothing over what night brings:
what a big sky, Texas, you're almost better in the day all
parched ground and azure azure. I love the glass on the high
buildings here, they’re like mirrors. This is God’s powder room.
This is where God sees himself drugged up and beaming in a
beautiful powder room. This is where God goes to remember
youth. I love how youth hasn’t gotten you yet. That unassailable
capacity for charity, that surging belief in belief shouting out
through your temples, I can’t stand how you make me sick of
making myself sick. You slapped the ******* outta me so quick
I’ve never seen grace move that fast. I thought you'd knock the
grapefruit polish right off your nails you hit me so good.
What a sight you are, kid, so proper and fit, Christ, you could
be therapy: so brunette-in-the-Fall, so full-lipped,
unabashed and Aristotelian, frayed like anything but ****
well stitched, impeccable at the seams.
After Matthew Dickman
Timothy Brown Nov 2012
Bed-ridden
with a grotesque taste
of mucus in my mouth.
Head hidden
beneath a wall of tissue.
I can't seem to clear my nose.
Aspirin given
in increments of 2x4.
My head is still pounding.
Fresh air forbidden.
I'm too weak to stand.
I'm too sick to think.
© November 21st, 2012 by Timothy R Brown. All rights reserved.
Mitch Nihilist May 2016
every 1:27am
I come to my garage
and I sit with wine
and converse with
an out-of-place nightstand,
june bugs aimlessly run into
stacked boxes and
heartbroken drywall wink
at my knuckles,
only tangibility could express the
scattered personality of this garage
but somehow I feel at home,
unplugged freezers,
shop brooms drenched in sawdust,
broken hockey sticks,
half stained 2x4’s
clout my memories with
wanting to be young again,
shooting pucks with dad,
having laughs roll
off my tongue again,
sweeping grass off
the driveway, and watching
my sister fail at riding a bike,
now she’s going to university
and I’m sweeping up
cigarette butts in this garage,
I still see the skateboard
I broke my wrist on and I
have to work in the morning,
at 1:53 I’m rolling up news papers
and hitting curve balled
june bugs and I have
to cut this short cause
my girlfriend called and she needs
a ride home from the bar //


3:17
Literally a randomized run through of an average night.

**THIS POEM IS NOTHING SPECIAL**
Robert Guerrero Sep 2013
No gloves or referee
Just a blank alley we can paint legally
With the vibrant colors of each others face
Dumpsters we can play in
2x4's with each others names
Let's fight
**** rules and regulations
Last man standing walks away
Beaten down but standing tall
Loser can sail away in his puddle of blood
Violence is on my mind
And you rung the bell
When you decided to play cat and mouse
With the fragile heart she carries
Along with the burdens of yesterday
Let's fight
No ******* or money involved
I need no pistol or grenade
My shotgun stare will carry you
To the explosion of my fist
Repeatedly rocking each side of your face
Bring an army
Be a *****
Bring a mirror
You're reflection will need surgery
Let's fight
Riddle stitches on each others face
I don't care who wins
I'm taking back the smile you stole
Ripping out the heart you digested
And I'll crawl back to her with them
I'll fight for you day in and day out. You're not just something to me, you're all I have left.
Robert Guerrero Apr 2013
Round 1
You beat me with a 2x4
I didn't see it coming
You snuck up from behind
Drilled splinters into my cranium
I dropped to the floor
And the ref counted 10

Round 2
I ***** your ***
You didn't hear me sneaking into your room
I taped you up
Tied you to your bed
****** you till you cried tears of blood
From your ******
I forgot you were a ******

Round 3
We laughed about this
Because it never happened
Just joked around
But we kissed
And continued with the fight
Because we wanted to hold the title

Round 4
Instant KO
I win told you I would
Simply by saying
Te casatoresti cu mine?
Mi vuoi sposare?
Quieres casarte conmigo?
Will you marry me?
I love you

But still you hold the title
Because you have the ring on your finger
You have my heart
You did what no one else did
Said....Yes I will!
With tears in your eyes
Guess I still have it in me. I'm not going anywhere!
Keith Moody Jun 2017
I'm a craftsman with words.
Each page I fill is another home I've built.
Every house is built differently to hold a variety of people.
I'm a craftsman with words.

A writing utensil is the only tool I will ever need.
It is a tool anybody can use but a true craftsman can do so much more with it.
My mind is a toolbox, filled with blueprints of houses just waiting to be built.
I'm a craftsman with words.

The page is the plot of land that I will build my house on.
The lines on the page is the foundation and the framework that I will build off of.
My pen is the hammer, each letter is a nail, and every word is a 2x4 holding the house together.
I'm a craftsman with words.

Every sentence a tile I lay to make the floor with.
Every paragraph is another wall that I put up.
Every "The end" is the roof I put to complete the house.
And every house I build, is a home people can move into.
I'm a craftsman with words.
There’s a gold-line interstate dancing through the state of mind, down through the snow storms of cotton willow seeds, to make your heartbeat freeze. 2x4’s hug the windows, and throw off the symmetry, of the three houses in a circle, where the town hall used to be… your grandma planted tobacco seeds. And the service played her lover “Taps” in 1943. And the money they sent home, bought her pills and some relief.
Oh Tennessee.
Tennessee.
Tennessee.
Frank Corbett Jan 2013
The glass is flying too quickly,
time is shuddering like a demolished foundation,
and I can feel snapping in my chest,
like the air in my knuckles,
but like nails in my heart,
it doesn't even hurt,
as I fly through the air,
into the newspaper stand,
2x4's splintering in my wake,
as I collapse alongside the brick wall,
completely and utterly surprised,
I swallow my teeth,
and walk.
SG Holter  Jul 2014
Constrivium
SG Holter Jul 2014
On the rough handrail
Leading up to the barracks-
Where the guys eat lunch

There's a growing gap in the
2x4 -from them carving
Themselves toothpicks.

Everything has potential
For something else
Within.

— The End —