afterseizure: define: fermata:

afterseizure: define: fermata:

: a pause of unspecified length on a note or rest

maybe it’s gummed in the hum

and the only note's a flat

jazz, something that holds
close to stringing it along but loose

enough before letting it be
completely undone, to seize above the struts

of that dam only the neurologist repairs

when the weather’s fit

or you're in for a routine chat,
when you aren’t on another job 

or trusting to get along on the winter
dole: regular, counted...     "how've

you been feeling, can you remember
any afterfits? the brain scan comes in

in a week or two"--and maybe he knows
the next one's on call,

it's somewhere in there where

the paint has been taken

straight down to the naked
bracing and stringers, each length

of flake a flint maybe and some
of it to come away

to lay

in stasis for the duration of danger

bridge out ahead
detour sign and traffic stalls

on the bottom of your brain

saying, like all doctors trained

in this way say, if the aggregation is

faded and sedate, if it all bends

at the knee like some truncated
supplicant, (didn't we hope

rehab would coax this out of
you) if it doesn’t rise up like

keenly rubbed grudges... and i
learned that it's kneaded

into the meat of your one palm with
redraw fist of your other knuckle

bones, bones that always make me
think of raw pink quartz stuck

under the kelpbeds...(though how
it got there, broken...isn't that

another knuckle in your palm) don't they  

seem to make the landscape under

your thumb look like you've been out

gloveless in the cold, how sometimes

i’d come to wonder if you'd raised

that fist to your wife or used

to raise it to your son just to show
who's boss.  mostly though

it's when we were kids: our only one
at a time dogs, or the one sister who’d spit

in your face, and then rub septic sludge

on your kindergarten bib and screech

then sit with the big kids

at the back of the bus on the way

to school. And you were stuck smelling like

shit all day and boiling in your head

and too little a boy to do anything

but store it and not even

crying or peeing yourself.  come a day

when you were grown you took

to carrying that eight cell

flashlight and you'd lift it

and let it fall on the meat of that hand

though by then I was gone

and i thought it was only street

talk.  You're sweet

and easy enough

when you smoke (you like

to roll your own) and in the cheap
skunk weed breeze you can be

downright pleasant and funny

to be sitting around and drinking 

coffee with.

and at first, it’s hard to hear

it coming and once

I remember

I said to myself (after

you'd slit your wrists

and been restrained

against the hospital bedrails)

I’d like to see the highway

of nerves in your brain

so I could watch the triggering

of a particular fit,

so I could back off you off (by then

you weren't good at keeping

yourself in the genuine

medicine) and say

well I’ll see ya and try

to shoulder through

that thick highball glass

your eyes come to

and watch myself bounce

around on their surface

like a stranger or a tied up

underfed dog

or a little boy who

(and it’s been years now

and hard to notice

unless the light is right

and you've just had a hair-

cut) walked up

to his open coat and tried

to climb in

and you my brother weren't

in there, or not the brother

i grew up with, before

your booze, before

your seizures, before

the shit and mud….

i want to say: poor boy.  both

of you.  all of you.  really. 

i want to talk to all the someones
and somewheres  that have lit you

each in turn have made that scar
on your skull, the one you comb through

some mornings and wince

when the tooth catches

and you’d like to have a fit

or, rolled ahead of time

for just this and other short

term reasons or no

reasons at all the shit

you smoke to keep you

at least in daylight

nice and easy and still,

a little slack in the few

links in the junkyard

chain, or the dam still 

under repair and the one man 

crew clean and levelheaded, 

somewhat hung

over, but still not yet there,
it being early yet...