Trial and Error

Watching you sleep,
crying a little bit
needing my own sleep.
Focussing
until my eyes divide;
replicated images
of hospital room
spin against themselves.

My brain suffocates
creeps to weak connection
between this wet emotional kaliedescope
and the turning patterns of your own steel gears,
silent, beside me.
not stainless steel;
not immune to external influences.
They do not run smoothly, but tick.

There are gears deliberately jammed,
violently jammed,
silenced in every totality short of removal.
They still twitch once in a while
this angers you.
But besides the occasional shudder they are stopped, efficiently,
in the same efficient style, attitude,
with which you have employed hockey sticks,
baseball bats, even
(a most efficient creation)
a length of chain, doubled, encased in a thick sock.

I have an idea of where these tactics come from.
I understand as well as i can from the outside.
Your life becomes the rhythmical spinning of the room.

Yes, valiant, you stand alone
solve your own problems
using tricks that have been
used on you.
Applied to your uses
with your own special flair.
But eventually someone returns the favour.
Completes the circle,
confirms the pattern,
takes away your baseball bat
pounds you to the sidewalk
one solid hit to the face;
friends you never trusted laugh in shock
you fly, slo-mo, backwards like
something from that Enigma video you hate.
Until your skull makes contact
edge of the curb.
Suddenly everyone realizes


"... this is serious."


A change in the pattern?

No, only a pause.
They will remove the blood clots,
you'll wake up with a scar above your right ear,
weak spot in your skull.
your mother will collapse with joy when she sees you,
and what you'll get out of this is
an aversion
to fistfights
with left
handed
people.


Celeste Côté


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