FRACTURED

Thunderstorms roll in like coupon samples
while I’m still laid-up after my “freak accident”;
the sky ruptured open, calcification, silver rain
just waiting for the inevitable, hot rooftops
steam with appetites like kings twiddling 
their thumbs—like trying to feed three mouths
at once, I fall short like a haiku. I’m writing 
this while a cold rag sits on my forehead, 
an empty orange juice bottle full of urine 
to my right, an empty coffee cup  to my left 
smoting me for re-fills & I need an ode to give 
to anything, to anyone before all of my senses 
rub off like cat-fur that sticks to my shirt like 
an effectual hieroglyph, how much longer 
with double-bruises, gritty films I lick up, 
my head unable to pan like a camera in the 
clickable sharp uptake of air: watercolorist’s 
smörgaåsbord, involuntary spasms, leave room 
for dripping. I sign the Guest Book to my own 
“Wake”:  my family like salivating Gold Rushers 
to clamp down bragging rights, others smirk 
in rapture at my suffering. I read books about 
body politics, rhetoricians, serial killers, classic 
obscure literature, but I cannot concentrate 
because I want a hot bath to fugue-plunge this 
bathos, rhapped unsavory savvy, exhilaration 
slurry. Poetry steers me like a Melville ship
lost at sea, hindered, requiring some “break through” 
of heroics, prize-hounds, letting off steam upon 
a steamboat, reckless tidiness I lean halfway off
of this cushion, my mind sits somewhere else 
cross-legged on a tatami launching itself before 
the blink of a cursor.