Head Wounds

Memory is lost
intangible, lucid
like the Atlantic mixing salt.
The Earth sways in orbit
as I toss to remember.

Why does my head hurt?
What did I do lost night?
Why am I in a room that's light
and bright?

When do we sign the lease for our own personal knowledge?
Does it expire?

It's important to desire
everything to be perfect.
It's a condition of normal. But now --
Alzheimer, senile, am I that old? Or is it something else?

Why does my head hurt?

Across the boulevard from this strange
motel I hear the ocean as waves,
not as the memory or waves,
it's the color of a bruise
with the sky above in missionary flatness
over her body. Now

something else leaks into this vision.

Gulls asleep on one leg,
the stink of the ocean,
split skin under toes,
the anchor weight of the tides,
a drowning headline.
It comes back. I begin to understand the light
and the brightness.

How do we know the first breath giving
spank didn't cause a seizure
called life?
Perhaps my insomnia is caused by this dark epiphany?

Perhaps it's the empty bottle of pills on my night stand
and no water to drink.
Only time to think
in this frightening light.