The question
after the strokes
was how he would
learn to live like this:

each hand leaden
and his feet too; unable
to get up; deafened
by average sound
and his memory and sense
always a split behind.

To start out he learned
that he looked like a star,
all skinny, all fizzy,
all dangerous
to the touch.

To keep going
he imagined himself
a continuous
mistake, wire-haired and badly
groomed.

He knew he smelled
remarkably like
a shroom-covered problem
of mysterious physics.

He looked at the earth itself
as if it were a boil
waiting to burst all over
the nearest portions of the
cosmos, leaving the close-flung
dirt to sort itself out.

He came back thinking
his memory of a past life
when he was younger
had at least to be
imaginable.

To finish with that
he sat quietly in a disheveled room
and dreamed of something
different.

After all was said and done
there just had, dear Lord,
there had to be
something different.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T