As school comes to an end, I decide to
spend the summertime with my instrument.
I read music theory for two hours,
but my hands yearn for the touch of six strings.
Fingers position themselves to stroke bliss.
But my phone’s troubled with recurring rings.

****, it was mom telling me I have class!
I raced for my backpack, and I told her:
I will not slack. Papers grew so lonely
without their folder to cuddle them close.
I couldn’t care to organize them cause
usually, I’d lay in my seat repose.

Ionic bonds? What do they even mean?
And what the heck is “double replacement”?
Okay, I should start paying attention.
I grasp the pen. I notice the tension.
As soon as I write, my hands start to shake.
I start over. Now hands begin to ache.

What in the world is happening to me?
Two words: I scream. Head jerks, and my legs shake.
It has to be a dream. It has to be!
Don’t want to move, but I have to take notes.
Why are random words bursting out my throat?  
I’ma be real. I need my mommy!

Class is over. I exclaim to mother:
my fingers refuse to stop tremoring.
And I’m getting these tics. What set it off?
First thing I do is reach for my guitar.
I can’t hold it. I can’t ******* grab it.
Eyes of terror stay written on my face.

The next day I was in a wheelchair.
I cannot look straight- straight up to the sky
or look in front and into people’s eyes.
My right-hand curves to the left. A tendon
sinks into my flesh, and my left fingers
cramp up from being intertwined like vines.

They are stiff. Hideous. These are not mine.
But it does get much better with some time.
I can walk again, talk again, and write.
But all good things come with downfalls, don’t they?
My brain disease will come at me with might.
And I refuse to give up on this fight.

There will be a time when I reach stage five.
And I know it won’t be a pretty sight.
I’m ready for what will happen to me.
Dearest guitar, please know you’re my heaven.
Why bother to fret? Cause’ when the time comes
I’ll see you again in a few seconds.

Believe what you know.
And may all
the better angels
follow you
        wherever you go

I simply don't believe, and I will not obtain anything from nothingness!

Oh, don't be like the fools you decry with ardor!

I believe I am true to myself.

You lie with illusions, feast on your own brain.

Feeding my beliefs in admittedly macabre manners.

Have you lost your sextant, sailor? Where is the lighthouse of your mind? Who has locked your benevolent gate?

The sky shifted out of excitement, malforming into the menacing child of blue and indigo. It inspired the apex of one’s thoughts, yet promised stoic impotence; a blasé response. Besides a burning Nissan, I was perplexed. Something taught me that I should be emoting, and the glove should be reading into my vortex of encumbrance. If no one acknowledges that I must be freed, shall I retain the visage of a captive? I am but a stifled, trembling man.

Music gives my eyes a tunnel and my mind the universe. This much I know and recite in verse- or, prose, well. However I may carry my words, they will do all frequencies a severe injustice. That is why I feel no need to describe the ether and the fluids that compose a tune. They simply are, anyone can perceive and dissect for themselves. The words, they serve to underline the story that an ear might not obtain from music. I aim to achieve a functional, symbiotic, conversational existence with these two chaps. One day, it’ll be great fun and my mind will sideflip its merry way through scrolls of papyrus and the speeches of lutes. Until then, it’s apparent and essential, necessary, to be trudging my forlorn way through the badlands of my cranium. Who knows? I may occasionally find myself an ardent hoodoo to comport my thoughts on. I will live for that and die for tomorrow. By increments, of course. I must believe that we’re not all imbeciles, here.

Page sticks to oneself; indentations upon indentations. Soon, it will all- or perhaps later?- it will all homogenize into a gestalt; a brain. Then, not long after that Exodus of the Neurons ™, the piece of wood will reanimate, shaking my hand and fishing for planets simultaneously, like any other sentient being that remains aware of the dome domain above us (or adjacent to?)
This is no performance, it is mere proof that my stimulant is optimal, that I breathe with vigour in my feet and weight in my fingers. It is a display of my gradual decay, foretelling the prognosis that I dare not utter: what can I do if I fall under Alzheimer’s heel? What then? Will I forget of the paragraph that I had just written beforehand? This pen, will it treat every word as a home to rest its riches in? This vagrant of a fool, he must remember his treads, the soles of the people that have led him to wherever he’s gone. What is the Joker without inspiration? What is a dancer without awareness? What is a figure without substance?