floating and leaving no trace
impressions of my headache
while lying on my bed with
my eyes closed and my hands
pressing into the sockets
luminous purples and greens
shaped like eggs
floating in a red-brown soup
but not a true black
the lie of blue shapes
and blood colored stripes
and finally a vertical slash
of white that fades as it slices
from top to bottom
cutting is the only truth
in the darkness
until you open your eyes
maybe it’s the way i’m sitting
at work
i think
trying to rationalize away
the throbbing pain
in the back of my neck
the front of my head
it’s certainly not stress
since there’s little be stressed out
about
at work or home
and right now
(knock on wood–hear me, o
forest spirit, o dryad, dweller
bark and wood pulp)
or it could be
my obsessive checking of
the phone
or my sinuses
–my sini?–
but how does that account
for the neck
and what i want
is a cool dark room
and quiet
and maybe some music
but low enough
to think it’s the neighbors
playing something i like
the throbbing in the back of my neck is where i expect the cool touch of your palm where i expect the slow gentle descent of your palm to slow the throbbing pain there brought on by not enough sleep too much caffeine not enough water being out in the sun being out in the fresh air even though the fresh air usually helps and my neck has a throbbing pulse all its own it seems separate from the rest of my circulatory system separate from my heart which beats out its own time its own timing and and i wait for the cool palm that will slow everyting down
too much twitching
–a damaged seventh cranial nerve
thank god it wasn’t the fifth–
squeezes like a vise on the temples
just like uncle fester
only not funny
and pressures the ear
so that you hear the ocean
the throbbing of the sunlight
early in the morning
hits the eyes
even coming from behind
and the malevolent glare of brake lights
of the cars on the 405
well, that just adds menace
like a spider it stretches its legs
at the back of the neck
and crawls over the scalp
and drives hairy fingers
right behind the eyes
the throbbing behind my eyes
is the pulse in my head
Words and Feathers 