broken leg

seaweed mind floating
clown fish ducking coral
my magnified eyes.

the coffee habit is getting worse or the dreams more clingy and demanding.  i can't shake the night like i used to.  i called annie on tuesday to tell her i most certainly broke my leg.  she paused and shook her head, shifted her weight onto her left side because her right hip gives her trouble.  i called her, not paid her a visit, and still i can picture her reactions exactly.  of course, she didn't believe me.  a broken leg, a broken leg.  yes, a broken leg.  i pinned the phone to my ear with my shoulder and licked the paper to number eight hand rolled cigarettes that day.  i roll my own because i'm cheap and because i like to think the loose leaf tobacco is healthier for you and i like to think that if i must roll my own i won't smoke as much.  truth is, with a broken leg, there isn't much else to do. 

annie didn't like my haiku.  she said it was nice, really nice.  if i wanted my writing to be nice i would have gone into business or political science.  but i was a poetry major, a poetry major who didn't really like poetry at all.  however, when you're told you have a knack for verse, when enough people tell you, you start to believe it.  i never felt it though, never felt the joy that some writers experience from a good day of writing.  i never felt moved to write above all else.  it never pained me or racked my mind.  in fact, i see very little of myself in the writing.  it's not like a broken leg, you feel one with a broken leg, you feel connected.

i'm a published poet a few times over.  annie was the first to publish me in a small literary journal she worked for through the community college.  she believes in my writing but not my broken leg.  i don't understand the world.  i say world because annie is so like the rest of them.  maybe my pain medication is making me misanthropic, but truly, the world has gone mad, mad.  in fact, part of me is happy to have a broken leg so i don't have to run the rat race with the rest of them.  another part of me thinks i should break the other leg so that when my building is set ablaze by the growing riots in the city, i won't be able to run away, i'll fall, just as so many iconic others. 

annie tells me i should use this story, this image, this delusion as fodder for my next poem.  broken leg.  two words i've latched onto she says, two words that i must free myself of.  but, but, but, but, i try to explain, this isn't poetry, this is my life.  i broke my leg.  i'm in a cast.  i'm in so much pain, i barely can move, but i called you.  i'm smoking again, okay, still.  but life is poetry annie whispers like she said something wonderful and profound, as if art was this divine, enlightened state.  life is not poetry.  poetry sometimes is life.  but most days a broken leg is simply the discontinuation of part of the femur from its other part.  some people romanticize everything.  i let the phone drop into my lap.  annie is trying to calm me in that ti chi way of hers.  i light my cigarette and let her voice grow louder and more frustrated, then tired and apathetic.  a little symphony of emotions. 

crack and snap and wrap
up the bone that once was whole
mend and sew and sew.

working through meditation

dip your little head into my warm thoughts i say.  even words seem foreign.  already too light for this world the bubbles rush to the surface of my tea.  there's so much that i want to tell you.  but i don't even know who you are, that is, you are me, of this i am coming to see.  but you feel separate too.  or something.  who are you?  multiple mes spilling out like jelly beans skidding across the linoleum floor.  buttered popcorn are your favorite.  i've always liked licorice.  there's a word that looks nothing like it sounds, licorice.  and my mind is undisciplined.  you are undisciplined.  scrappy little kid, rambunctious little urchin.  urchin or puffer fish or tea bag floating on the surface like a sunfish.  who am i? i ask you.  and you laugh and dart.  don't the books tell you?  don't you know?  how silly.  aren't you nothing?  aren't you nothing and everything, a multifaceted jewel in a unending web of inter strung multifaceted jewels? 

the tea that steeps beside me at this very moment is called 'detox'.  i hope to flush my system, to clear a path in the forest of my fragmented mind.  unfortunately, the tea is too hot to sip and i must live with my insanity a little longer.  the sound of fingers against keys...ah revelry!  listen to the sound of each word as you say it.  sound, say, sound, say...like waves.  does it not make you so hungry and alive?  oh you, you, you, youyouyouyou, you just    wanted    release.  needed to write.  yes.  not insanity.  put away the DSM, you are okay.  and we are talking and you've stopped scrawling inappropriate images in the hallway.  yes, it's been a while since you've heard the clack, clack, clack. like the sway of a ballroom dancer on pointed heels, waiting, tapping, your foot, clack, clack,clack,clack music of the keys...oh the beauty!

and now that you are free what is it you wanted to say?  say that i love the keys, i love the flat, smooth surfaces of them, that i'm in love with the look of my fingers dancing across them, that i love the image of each character and the power to bring meaning from the flat little slates, to design worlds, to make music, to free myself to enter into some greater arena.  to dedicate myself to the meticulous detail of putting it all together one little line at a time.  first the t then the i then m then the e.  time.  writing is meditation.  to be distanced from writing, to be taken from it, is to be pulled from my very self.  there is no one absolute way to enlightenment and there is, i do not think, one absolute moment of enlightenment.  that is to say, one does not become enlightened and forever stay that way.  enlightenment or deep understanding comes in a variety of forms.  to maintain balance i must write and remember that writing is not a task, but an immensely beautiful form that i am able to revel and steep myself in.  it is me.  i must remember to love it as a connection to myself.  i must approach it as i should approach myself, embracing every character, every tap, every image because it is divine.