All my friends are tortoise-shelled Merlins stalking statues
with their walking canes at dusk while
I pad behind them on all fours
as the day breaks the clouds like wet tissue.
And, Garrett, you broke the picket line –
Once the spotlight’s beam with that grin wider than yours and mine’s minds’ intangible illusions – Now the rustle of an intermission between stage and applause.
Our afternoons were spent *******
nicotine out of burning daily afflictions
between raspy exasperations and half-laughing
declarations about how we couldn’t catch a break.

I would ask you why, but it’s not my place.
It’s not yours, either.

I’ll tell you The Why about me, Garrett. I’ll tell you the right
and proper Why I had to pause and stifle
my cigarette break before my wrists broke
                before my wet-eyed babbling witnessed your last wave’s exhalation on all our friends

The Why I was 40 when I saw the shady What If [the same
                that stalked you] linger round my mother. And
                I heard your exhalation of “Mama Kara” and
                I remembered how to act.
The Why I was 13 when I begged the ambiguous How Do I out of you
                when I felt lifeless and pale within UIC's Courtyard -- all of our eyes spread white and feverish.

We can never pay for it -- too much of one thing is
Our buckled knees dragging the question to the fountain to make it drink.
Garrett – although so distant, the brush you had on me is the echo of a “Yup” and an “I know, right?”  and "Yo, lemme get a square,"
that drowns out the reverberating sound
of grief-clapping palms,
and cries, of everyone’s “Why?”

They put me in a room where everyone knocks on the door. They expect you to keep your sanity where most of the patients needed to be locked up in a funny farm. They fill the patients full of psychotopic meds but in truth it is turning these morons into zombies. They don't know if they are coming or going but Imust actually say the only positive thing I heard from the psychiatrists out of UIC psych floor is why don't you get your poetry and stories published to me. I will never havea normal life again no thanks to Robert Littlejohn, Michael Czech, and http://facebook.com, which I have closed down. I do miss Denise Seymour I wish she would call me. She blocked me from her facebook and changed her phone number. I love you Denise come back to me  please.

Plug it into the amplifier,
Record the data.
It's easy.
I wish it really was.

EEG labs are bland,
Boring -
But mostly
Anxiety-inducing
Stressing
Centers for science.

My dream was broken at one of these,
As I came in each day,
Expecting to do great research work
And learn -
Work with data first hand!

That's not how things play out.
I was left without guidance -
Or at least not the guidance I resonate with.

I graduated university bright-eyed and hoping,
Just hoping,
That I could make something of myself.
This is how I felt when I started as well.

I had a dream of helping people.
It feels like I can't get there now.
I walk into the lab
And the others,
My "colleagues"
Speak down to me.
As if I don't have a degree,
As if I am not trying so ******* hard
To do something here.

I want to be part of a project,
I do.
I want to work with data,
I do.
I want this experience to move
On to my PhD
And do my own research
And help people -
I really ******* do.

But this topic is as sticky
As the gel that glues
Electrodes to the participants
Abraded scalp.
I feel trapped,
Not able to convey this to the supervisors -
I could be judged,
I could possibly be looked down on even more.

So,
I re-read the training protocols
And try to get the one more sign-off
To run appointments.
And fail again,
But then try again.

What else am I supposed to do without guidance?
My professors at UIC saw something in me,
I wish the researchers I work with now did.
I wish I saw something in me as well.

(for purpose of this poem
pronounce last word uh gain).

The missus uttered
aforementioned phrase
as she pulled a clump of my hair
from out the clogged shower drain
for no rhyme nor reason lemme explain
how so many globs of these strands
linkedin to scalp courtesy hair follicle,
which hair follicle essentially
a tube-like structure (pore)
that surrounds the root
and strand of a hair.

Hair follicles exist
in the top two layers of skin.

The average individual
born with over five million hair follicles
in their body and over
one million hair follicles
on his/her head, and as I aged
about that many seem to
get loosed when washing then rinsing hair,
nevertheless more hair continues
to grow out of hair follicles
smaller in size than sand grain.

I surmise that if laid end to end
each hapless hair that got plucked
out me noggin since birth
would fill many a railroad car,
(extending from Schwenksville,
Pennsylvania to Ukraine)
railcar (American and Canadian English),
railway wagon, railway carriage,
railway truck, railwagon, rail carriage
or railtruck (British English and UIC),
also called a train car, train wagon,
train carriage or train truck;
a vehicle used for the carrying
of cargo or passengers on a rail transport.

Said locomotive boxcars full to the brim
with globs of hair (mine)
after lathering locks
(each filament evincing
fifty shades of gray fibrous)
composed of 95% keratin,
a fibrous and helical protein
(in the shape of a helix),
which also comprises
composition of the skin
and of all the phanera (hair, nails, etc.).

Synthesized by keratinocytes,
keratin insoluble in water,
thus ensuring waterproofing
and protection for hair.