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)

This terribleness. The blur of traffic lights and puddles paints Los Angeles on my face at night. It's so hard to know who will doze in my blind spots. Sunflower seeds and ******* lining the carpet. I sat on the front porch for five hours gutting the wolves from my appendices. Usually the headaches go away with the squashing of the lights. Fluorescents are the worst, halogens second, and 60-watt 120-volt light bulb the bane of my existence. I look at my phone but I cannot summon a quirky 120 character quip. I need excedrin but all I have to grape flavored children's aspirin. I should have asked for the water. How many unfinished glasses of water have I left around this world?
     Maybe Bruce and I will squash after work. I can hear his weekly catalog of two night stands with those married transient women who drive from Santa B. I hate golf, I could have made carried a career in this resentment. Maybe rolling down the window will alleviate some of this pressure. Maybe it's barometric pressure, The Baby is here in time to drag the houses out to sea. It feels like Michelangelo is carving The David in my head and it's the chiseling I've never wanted. It's Tuesday and the drugs were horrible. They killed five of them today. We wrapped their heads in blankets from the Thrifty, and had to have the interns find clothes that would fit for the Christian caskets. Two days until Giving Thanks Day.
     I am wrapped in copper and stuck in amber. I am acquitted by nonsense and stipulation, sick with nausea and pushing my forehead into the steering wheel. This is all terrible. The lying I've never told myself. The people that don't even know it's lying. Her and I always seem to escape with our happiness and pleasure in tow. The odds are slim, but our clothes have never fit too tightly.

I haven’t written anything in a long long long time.

I feel so old.  I feel like an old woman whenever im crashing. Or thinking, actually.

I don’t even know where to begin.

i haven’t even written anything yet and my eyes are welling up.  Its so ******* hard, everything is so ******* hard.

I remember when I wrote that speed makes everything easy.  And it does, but only for a little while.   Now, everything is broken.  Nothing feels right.  Actually, nothing feels like anything anymore.

Now, I need it.  So. *******. Badly.

24 hours.  Exactly 24 hours.  That’s when the withdrawals start every single time.  Sometimes I’ll withdraw by accident.  I’m so caught up in my life I forget that I’m a sorry ******* speed freak, I’ll forget I’m an addict.  I’ll forget I’m a low-life pill head and I won’t feed the growing monster inside me.  But it doesn’t give up that easily.

I’ll feel it in my head.  It starts with this blossoming pressure headache, right between my eyes, on that bone between my eyebrows.  It feels hot, stabbing, relentless, constant.  It feels like my skull is bleeding.  I can’t see, I can’t look at light.  I wear dark glasses to hide my eyes, haunted by demons and ***** chemical desires.  My limbs shake, my head spins, I feel like I’m about to pass out, throw up, not really sure, maybe even ******* die.

But they have pills to fix headaches.  Excedrin became my best friend.  

Then started the manic depression.  Unpredictable, wild bi-polar mood swings that drove me insane.  I got so low once, I didn’t leave my bed for 36 hours.  Didn’t brush my hair, my teeth, nothing.  Just lay there crying.  Cried about the life I was ruining, my beautiful family I was letting down, the friends I couldn’t bare to see anymore.  I was so emotionally fragile, one wrong comment and I burst into tears.  I felt lost, I felt alone, somewhere dark, deep, deep down in a cold well by myself, shivering, afraid.  But I didn’t know how to word it, I only knew how to cry.  

My only escape was sleep.  Until it wasn’t.  Speed was greedy, it took that from me.

I started having crazy narcoleptic sleep-paralysis night terror episodes.  I can only describe them as slightly schizophrenic.  I wouldn’t remember falling asleep, and something normal would happen.  I’d be sitting in my bed, and then I’d fall and slam my face in a floor full of glass.  I would try and move, but I would be paralyzed.  Then I’d blink and I’d be awake, confused, as to what was happening to my sanity.  Dreams and reality cross, and I cannot longer differentiate between the real world and my imagination, ridden with monsters.  I started to hallucinate, spiders coming to get me.  I’d sob because suddenly I had nowhere to run to, I was no longer safe even in my dreams.  I am a slave to my poisoned mind.  The lack of sleep made me further depressed, dangerously suicidal.  When I slept, I would sob and yell out horrible things.  I’d cry and say I wished I would die.

I’m too sad to eat, too diseased to sleep.  I have no motivation in my life anymore to do anything.  My problem ruined my life.

I never feel happy anymore.  Now I yearn to just feel normal, or at least rid enough depression to not be suicidal.  And I miss feeling happy.  I used to be so ******* happy, and I abused it.  I took advantage of my gushing dopamine, never imagined a life without it.  I never thought one day I would need a substance to feel “okay”.  

The only thing that makes me happy now is a lot and lot and lot of speed.  But I know it’s only temporary, and only further buries me in this awful cold place I inhabit now.  

No one can help me, there is no comfort, no warmth, nothing that makes me feel less isolated, less ****** up.  I am ashamed.  I hide from the people I love, and cry from homesickness and loneliness.  But I can’t let them see what I did to myself.  Even now my fingers shake from the tears I’m fighting back as I think about my triplets, my little brothers, my kitten, my best friends, all so far away in the past, in beautiful sunny memories I keep tucked away in notebooks and pictures.  I think about my grandma, my mom, my godmother, and I whimper in shame.  I miss them all so much. I just want to go back and fix everything, but I can’t.

I can’t tell them.  They wouldn’t understand.  They would hate me, disown me, never speak to me again.  I’m so delicate right now, that rejection would push me over the edge, finally **** me.  I’d rather have them all think I’m a selfish, lazy idiot than a drug addict.  

It all just makes me cry.  I’m so lost in this awful mess.  So alone.  I miss my old life, I just want to reverse it.  But its not that easy.  

Why is it that after all this, I sit here now, fighting the urge to put another pill up my nose? WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH ME?

Why do I still want them? WHY? It is 2 in the ******* morning, why can’t I just come down and stay there?

I guess I’m scared. Scared to face what I have to.  Negative emotions, withdrawals, the inevitable.

But why must I binge? Why can’t I regulate? I guess that’s the definition of an addiction, a lack of self control.
Ah, the inner turmoil, the war raging inside me is slowly destroying me.

I can’t stand it. I’m sure soon I will die.

Life is but a series of redundancies strung together. Sitched with tragedy by ****** hands, I only hope not to stain the thread.

Every event in this existence is nothing more than a domino in an endless time loop
, constantly falling/ constantly falling / i am falling.

fact: the name of the spots on domino tiles are called pips and i’ve tried killing myself two times.

The night I snuck 3 orange bottles from the kitchen cupboard and melted into pillows/into bed sheets/ into wooden ikea frame
waking up to not shiny gates but my mother holding a skeleton in the shower
head in a galaxy so far way i almost missed my alarm clock.  
i wanted to hit the snooze but got a glass full of charcoal instead.
mm was just how i like my coffee, black and ***** inducing.

fact: charcoal is among the purest forms of carbon as are diamonds

I am not a diamond, but a piece of pyrite. fool’s gold.

The second time two years later involved a bulk bottle of excedrin
one part aspirin, one part tylenol, one part caffeine.
if you ever try to off yourself i don’t recommend this recipe,
dog ear it in your terminal cook book as do not try this at home
you will lie on your bedroom vomitting your intestines until your parents are tired of hearing it

They will make you go to school the next day.

You wont.

fact: The most common causes of death are heart disease and cancer. Suicide is number 11

My world spilled over like a bag of glass marbles hitting the floor

Can you cure this flu?
I need relief! I'm appealing to you!
It's a nasty bug making its rounds,
There ain't no cure to be found!
I've tried over counter,
And I've tried herbs,
I'm so miserable, there ain't no words!
But you can't help me, cuz I'm in the red,
So I'll take some excedrin and go to bed.

i don't even know how to be sad anymore.
all i know is rage.
i know red knuckles burning because
i had to punch the kid in yellow jacket
hands
to melt the rage off of my soul
i just don’t want an angry soul
take my soul
i thought yellow was happy color.
i shouldn't have taken it out on him.
this is fingers tingling.
the bented M on the BMW sign
on my stirring shell
makes me where my anger with pride.
i shouldn't be proud that my fist got stronger.
the crack i made in the mirror in my car looks like the cracks in my rattling bones, that keep digging in the dirt in the graveyard.
why am i obsessed with
skeletons.
broken bodies and souls
need help too.
all of my cancerous thoughts
are molded to
each edge of my
gooey brain.
spilling out of my
temples making the
bottle of excedrin
open
too often

in the afternoon we chew our pills,
sweating the backs of knees, armpits,
blessed the skittering of grass on down-brushed
shins.
pulsing behind our eyes, weeping the veins,
shuddering the voltaic nerves. god,
the excedrin.

Ha!

Human (rat) race doomed!

Foregone conclusion hashtagged,
linkedin, predicated, et cetera, cuz
overactive derrière of yours truly
(no names mentioned, nor fickle
finger of fate pointed), and writer
of these words and one among many
riders (he adores) on the storm –
referring to brewing, looming, and
quaking potentially severe economic
fallout shattering The "debt ceiling"
or "debt limit"recommends ye dear
unknown (anonymous) readers bid
thee toodle loo  to civilization
and its discontents.

So much for hyperbole!
    
How axiomatic, ironic, quixotic, zoologic
that thee unavoidable ****** urge occurred
while in the midst of writing about that
vitally important ****** function, which
for any other Tom, **** or Harry would
be safer endeavor at least within their home.

That margin of err rear harmlessly doth
NOT exist within the rented domicile
of this twenty six plus years a married
(lighthearted) middle aged man.

What requisite non-forceful,
essential, dutiful call visiting
the ***** to purge the body electric
of supposed waste matter
(quite efficient machine ****
Sapiens anatomy), regarding
said expelling solid, loose, liquid...
thru **** ought to rank as
minimally risky private business.

Imagine matter of fact saunter
to the loo fraught with Uriah heaps
of danger that could imperil
the very existence of (in this case)
myself, and the rest of humanity.

Upon attempting to amble
very short distance, (perhaps
half a dozen paces), an
immediately deleterious,
hellaciously luminous, and
perilously serious threat
(unsurpassed even by hooliganism  
signature destruction forever
enshrining Gothic or Vandals –
if such peoples lived today and
occupied this apartment unit),
loomed as a far more impossibly
harrowing mission any combination
of maximum strength (Excedrin
would be superfluous) supposed
major natural disasters all rolled
into one frightful maelstrom.

Oft times the powerful need
to relief thyself disallows any
preparation H(abiliments), thus I
am forced to make a quick dash
to the toilet, BUT between
the cozy comfort of this easy
chair and the durable material
designed to suction even the
baddest, biggest, boldest BM
belies a trail and mountain
far more of wicked bewitched
crossing then say the now defunct
Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

Though this comparison may seem
like an exaggeration, the higgledy
piggledy hewn heap of fetid foul
fermenting faecal matter poses
dangerous, death defying diabolical
(DO NOT ENTER) dump.

No other option existed for me
to eradicate, expel, exorcise, et
cetera potential ***** matter except
to strike out toward barrier reef
of noxious, odoriferous, pestilential,
queasily revolting sky high (declared
SuperFund Site) to  enjoy simple
pleasure, whereby Gluteus Maximus
dispenses with human toxins.

The urge to let loose a stool sample
overrides any time to pen loving
note to surviving family members,
which (two darling grown daughters
seem like foreigners (or survivors
on a desert island) as each precious
Punim pursues autonomy countless
miles, whereby the eldest then
a Junior at The University of Pennsylvania,
and the youngest offspring plane
and simple sailed about seven
years ago to become
seasoned student abroad.

Though a tenant at this subsidized
(and quite agreeable accommodations
nestled within Perkiomen Valley,
Pennsylvania), no exaggeration necessary
to describe daily cataclysm perchance
spelling doom and downfall of this
dry husband and loving father to deux
progeny, who would hate to leave said
special offspring behind under
the sheltering sky.

Thus every onset to traipse
so few feet to flush out
thine flotsam and jetsam,
(when stream of ***** sprays
like a hose) to pay obeisance
and homage to modern
plumbing, the flash of mine
lxiv years zips thru me
memory, particularly when
carefully, gingerly
lumbering ridiculously slow
(lest mishap finds ambulance
siren wailing destiny of this chap
(most likely pronounced
dead on arrival), whereby tell tale
sigh of turgid tummy
would automatically inform doctors
that obstruction preventing quintessential
rear supply tubby
undisputed venal wickedness.

Tis at  unstoppable twitches
to defecate, (which sharp
saber rattling ****** spasms)
denote common urgent irrepressible
need arising within bowels),
when mental gallows humorous arises.

Such an embarrassing ending
(post eerie er) demise re: conclusion
to my rather ordinary life – (visa vis
being constipated, deprived
or hindered freeing offal,
would put to shame “windbag”
i.e. google as  proof positive
of blocked means to eliminate waste).

Also in tandem (though very
slightly tangential to above
distressful horrible likely presentiment,
this xMan bemoans being
swept off my yam bic pent
tam meter feet (literally)
by gigantic hands of she
(thee divine Gaia, who now
scatters defecated detritus
damning ability to access
commode constitutes reflection
on remaining Norwegian
Bachelor farmer from Lake Woebegone.

How trajectory of one measly
mortal primate webbed
whirled wide eyed schleps
along boulevard of broken dreams
(he may as well live planets,
galaxies or universes apart
worlds) ever shared
an intersecting vector
with another continues
to confound this crossword puzzler.

Again that sneaky sobriquet
irony doth mettle with
steely goatherd drivers
goes Pasteur ****, where gin
till lit tee lives.

Long story short described below.

Circumstance found this then
quite content solitary
son of the soil invited
to admirable, estimable, inimitable
estate listed as “Glen Elm”
within  National Registry of
owned properties within
Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

Garrison Keillor slated guest of honor.

He possessed je nais se quois
ability to tell tall tales,
whereby audience members
became rapt with seduction,
usurpation, and wide eyed yearning
to lean in so as to hear the suspense,
which increased in magnitude
in direct proportion as
his home spun voice became softer.

Unbeknownst to this
poor country bumpkin, when
he took bathroom break
during impromptu intermission,
a gal in her mid thirties
livingsocial with her parents
within the Mainline
(very wealthy enclave of residents
within southwestern Montgomery
County, Pennsylvania)
agreed to follow Jewish tradition,
asper prearranged marriages.

Though neither of  Semitic peoples,
nor the least bit familiar
with one of the oldest Religions,
thee family, whose youngest daughter
hinted of spinsterhood, their
open minded kindred ideas
generated exception to  
dictum remaining steadfast
to pinpoint “a nice Jewish
Kosher Boy”!

As frequent attendees
at this Leiper Mansion and
storied magnet for literati,
the accidental chance encounter
found thyself and unfamiliar gal
(fate decreed as thy bartered bride)
happened to be awaiting use of water closet.

As tends to be the predilection
of so called fairer gender ***,
this petite and attractive dame
introduced herself, which subsequently
found us becoming more
curious about the other.

The natural order of two
heterosexual individuals
(one male, the other female)
allowed basic instinct of
attraction to engender
fledgling friendship, that quickly
leapfrogged into
a sexually intimate dalliance.

Without any precautions
qua birth control inevitable
outcome of hitting
the figurative bullseye linkedin while
listening to the rhythm method occurred.

This reality determined
tepid reception courtesy
future parents in law to marry gal,
whose youngest daughter's
future child I fathered.

Even from this fairly commonplace
getgo dynamics wildly described
along seismograph of 10.00 earthquake,
one category 5 hurricane,
and an F5 tornado thrown in
for good measure for measure,
these tidbits totally hyperbolic,
thus equal much ado about nothing relative
to the interpersonal juxtaposition
of our quite rapid tête-à-tête,
that continues (to much lesser degree –
analogous to subsiding
storm of the Century 21) to this day.

After surviving approximately
two and a half dozen plus years,
(the marital inflictions
unquestionably more harrowing,
strangulating, and threatening
life and limb) battle scars
(many broken bones begot
by innocuous shuffling to
bathroom) populating neary
every square inch of this
ordinary chap deserves a medal of honor.

Utter brainless nincompoop
in this poem heretofore addressing
I wanna be forever free
and clear from mortal anguish,
and need more than a blessing -
I need a miracle worker after confessing
behavior causing depressing
wretched state of mind
self incriminating admission expressing
emptying out checking
and savings accounts.

Gross negligence fomented morass
of monetary hemorrhage,
thus yours truly speculating
imagining peaceful easy feeling
after quaffing hemlock beverage
(considerably less expensive
than trained masseuse
administering head to toe effleurage)
the former painless demise
popularized courtesy Socrates
whereby Athenian democracy
charged said philosopher

with impiety and corrupting
the youth of Athens
unlike him I feel mental,
physical, and spiritual states
devastated, jackknifed, and shattered
into a million little pieces,
hence appealing notion shucking off
western civilization equipage,
and concomitant linkedin
corporeal defrauded earthling
and author of these words.

The importance of money
or lack thereof smarts,
especially when series
of unfortunate events
even Lemony Snicket,
would be flabbergasted
at such blatant and flagrant stupidity
exhibited courtesy yours truly.

Herr dummkopf did not function
with one iota of his brain
case in point entire
financial cushion he did drain
anonymous, barbarous, egregious,
ferocious, iniquitous jerks
re: cyber crooks enriched their coffers
in previous poems I did explain
how yours truly got sucker punched
to surrender substantial capital
subsequently severe depression

washes over me like floodplain
after a major hurricane
thus another shout out,
though I feel quite insane
to drum up buffer (in) zone
excedrin also sought
to bring temporary relief
far fetched likelihood in dough main
despite moon shot
to witness philanthropic boost,
I keep praying Meg Found
will pull thru and ordain
(fiasco from fraudster frazzles father)
one ordinarily perspicacious primate
who financially doth strain.