Definitions

Let me tell you

Let me tell by saying nothing

Let me say 

Let me say

Let me say I’m assiduously trying 

To explain how I feel

Or rather the feeling of lack of feeling 

While exemplar excess of feeling

Limerence similarly cannot be described not wholly 

Never, either

Still we slap a name on the melting image 

As it hardens again 

Knowing to name a puddle is a myth

While the two obsessors are

I love you   erupting

Into one volatile tangling

It lets off steam

Resists packaging but shoppers,

We resist rogue 

Wince at bulk 

I’m struggling against a human fence 

Throwing my body 

I want to dismantle against 

Listen for the chain link jingle 

To express 

to express even if  even when 

What’s expressed 

Gets diced by the fence 

Release, inexorable

A shot and sheer force 

Shredding on impact

I mourn the thoughts I share

Damage beyond repair done in shipment

These synchronized people

Professional digesters 

I bet their stomach acid could

Burn a hole through alterity

If they could manage to coordinate

But they refuse to turn their necks 

Break the necks that dare degree

Cowards of unpracticed axis’s

Too afraid to see

They keep me convalescent

Even though I was never sick

Didn’t go under the knife

I am recovering, though 

From the news 

That I’ll never get better

Always infected with the feeling 

I have further to go

I can always do better

Pretending the ideal of health is attainable 

And communication possible

To grow past sardonic faces 

Administering vaccines   sterility 

The hand of the doctor

Robotic, that hand

“You’ll feel a quick squeeze” 

The practice that made me sick

Now titillates better 

With no plan to let go 

Takes credit, a hero—

I know

A savior complex 

when I see one 

Then the gelatin TV screen begins

An explanation of my condition

Purposively soporific 

I have to fight to listen 

It drapes wet paper towels over my eyes

And pushes soggy balled napkins into my ears

As I was precipicing the cure 

In the grip of my shorn fingertips

Stretching out the line

That coils into my fingerprint 

Extending my last effort

Then it’s black    I missed 

Then I can guess I go limp

I’m limp

Couldn’t resist a placebic opiate

A dream and its version of a moment

Time more evanescent than a bubble

Time travel gifted the quality of normalcy

Instantaneous transport   flipping between moments in a Rolodex 

Never coating my lucid self shocked

The sleeper never finds surreality  disconcerting 

Until a sudden and flooded attention

Shocking my body springs up 

Pulsing vibrant hope

Electrifying what confusion is left from going under   fog from giving up 

Blind but learning to see underwater

Thank feeling for reminding me to breathe

For my eyes tearing apart shores to see

noise loving ears 

searching abysses of silence for sound to hear

Skin that softens blows  

Always believes it can take violence 

I’m learning to forgive my wrong doers

Because to blame everyone

Who doesn’t understand is to forget that

Awe asks nothing of you.

I pray this time 

The world will show some magnanimity 

Grant me some clarity

(This poem was the outcome of a vocabulary learning practice. Words: assiduous, limerence, inexorable, convalescent, sardonic, soporific, magnanimous.)