The Abundance of Nothing: Poems

My Waiting Brain

35 My Waiting Brain i There are pathways he must follow when he goes into my brain, or else something catastrophic might happen. He said any kind of bleeding in the brain is not good. I think he was talking to himself. Meantime, my waiting brain said, Love yourself; love your pain and your illnesses waiting down the road for you like old friends in the shade. Better spend some time tonight, looking at the stars. 36 ii Empty again as the dead hawk’s heart is empty of blood on the highway where it must have slammed into the truck’s windshield at say sixty-five miles an hour is how my brain says the world looks today, although it may be this unseasonably warm winter of green grass and geese who don’t know which way to hoot that has my head spinning; the way a too warm December evening can hold still its last moment of light, right before your eyes. 37 iii Help, my waiting brain says, and then, Fuck you. He woke me up at 4 a.m. with his pal, Mr. Spinning Room, in our private field of opiates, so all I could do was lie there and listen to rain murmur in the night, the sound like someone who is lost, talking to herself in the dark. 38 iv Good morning highly polished chrome nightmare tool. You look fine this morning, like a silver snake bristling alive in every scale, longing to be inserted into my waiting brain to wind down the tunnels of me, once and for all. 39 v We were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ the Savior, by stuffing our bodies with food and wine, so, like the Romans, we fell into a stupor afterward, a semi-comatose state, especially the men. Everyone was otherwise preoccupied, and although I was surrounded by the snoozing, snoring bodies of my people, it was as if I were alone, just my waiting brain and me. Night came with its enormous rotation of stars, so something seemed possible, even if it wasn’t hope, even if the thing we spend our lives moving toward is unknowable, until it’s too late to turn back. 40 vi In the dark I wanted peace, my waiting brain told me, as if that’s too much to ask, as if sacrifice is too much to ask, given everything I’ve done for you, and how could I argue. 41 vii In the end, my waiting brain said, Dismantle me but don’t undress, the blue spruce watch us through the blowing snow; forgive my forgetfulness, but I don’t remember my name. ...