As of late, shifting among new medications and environments, the sudden workload of returning to college after a month off, the in and outs of the hospital hustle and bustle in a cognitively and physically excrutiating rush to get my symptoms under control, I have had much time to reflect and imagine. I might sleep for eight, ten, or eleven hours; none of it is enough to supercede the exhausting battle against epilepsy or the tranquilizing effects of medications. There is hope even here, in the place between drowsing and waking where reality doesn’t seem real, and my dream-consciousness is more awake than my own, and it is in the spirit of life. This poem is one of the many products my artistic drive has captured.
Untitled Verses While Waiting In the Hospital
My life is almost like in
those for-television-dramas:
the little boy is bald and
hairless and cancerous and
fighting for his life
in a medical ward in
some fictional hospital.
He draws with colored pencils
and speaks weakly to the
nurses and all their aides.
His smile is full of life but he
fears the condition that ails him
might be terminal; the concern in
everyone’s eyes might be
subliminal, but it’s there —
the raucous fear that flashes
inside of him like lightning,
takes his breath away,
stifles his spirit when
he most needs it.
Somehow, I’m different;
life is mostly merry and
the days are growing and good —
I, the patient, am still sitting here
wondering, wandering through
my thoughts like a human machine
transfixed on the organic world outside
my window. Flesh is an
anachronism here, a place of healing
where wires and blood converge.
My brain is no longer like the perfect vacuum
of outer space where theories and mysteries can
formulate, permeate, remain undiscovered when
the doctor shines his pen light into my eyes;
I’m plugged into the wall, a trendy
electric car, charging my batteries.
My sensuality is connected to electrodes,
connected to cybernetic nerves that pinpoint
and glimpse at every thought process
and heart-stopping, seizing suspicion of something
wicked yet to come, all fixed up among
my anxiety in the harmony colored electrical cables
that, in its empty inanity, looks almost like the stars.
Wanderlust 
I have been reading through some of your poems this morning. Soon I will have to get ready for work. Anyway, Several of the poems have “stopped my mind” which is a good thing. It takes more than one reading to feel the communication, you know…
This poem did catch my eye as well. And it makes me feel the need to write some of my own. I’m tonic-clonic and have to take 600 mg of topamax a day to keep things calm. Usually I’m okay but if life and “I” get stressed for too long, it doesn’t fully control things, and I will seize up, but not full blown.
Anyway, we do the best we can.
And now time to start the daily work routine. Hope to come back to read more of your poetry.
Thank you for your comments, I hope to read some more of yours as well. It is quite coincidental that we both have a seizure disorder. In some ways, it is simply another quirk and has made me question the nature of life and death more deeply and intensely — vastly existential questions.