Notes From The Sickbed (Poetry)

Pain is in the mind, they say
and so I clear it out — eject
sensation — wipe the ever-pulsing screen.

Pain’s loathe to go — it writhes and clings
to thought’s long-haired mad wanderings
before it weakens, slowly shaken off.

Then nature fills the void that’s left
with oddities — the strangest things
occur to me. I reach for pen and pad

and scrawl them down in feverish hand
words tumbling drunk into a ditch
they form themselves somehow and keep

half-conscious, twitching through the night
jabbed awake, such jottings string
their random clutch of wildwood notes.

Morning checks those memoed lines
hungover hours stretch — unwind
the jangled nerve that ached to write.