Sean Thomas Dougherty

Malapropism

Michael Bazzett wrote nobody fails
at meditation like I do, but I misread
it nobody fails at medication like I do,
& I picture the little pills I take,
& maybe they are little clouds
of thought, like in a cartoon bubble
filled with words I cannot read.
Or that are erasures of other words
I have forgotten how to spell.
I have this tendency to take myself
apart like a word I have misread.
I parse the letters, rearrange, & write.
The suddenness of shifts,
like when the medication fails,
or falters, what is this voice
inside my head saying?
A voice that’s mine but not mine
or mine but is not working overtime.
At work, the medication rarely fails
for those I care for. They have voices
even louder inside their heads, entire
choirs calling out to them so loud
they turn the music up or let
the television blare to drown the noise.
Take a tiny pill. Take a tiny pill.
Take two. & they are dosed.
& then the quiet comes. they
point out a little cloud.
A little silly cloud.
They stand & watch it cross
the sky. The vacant stares
as they are stoned.
Have you ever heard a song
& sang it wrong? I mean for years.
Remember Nirvana & their hit
It Smells like Teen Spirit?
The one with lyrics so garbled
no one agreed with what they were.
We simply rocked our heads.

Banged as we said back then.
Our stoned heads. The lead singer
of Nirvana Kurt Cobain overdosed.
But you & I are we are we are still here.
If you meditate correctly, the Buddhists
say you can reach Nirvana.
The highest state of Being,
devoid of attachment. Empty & pure.
It was rumored Kurt Cobain’s heroin
was close to pure. Close to spirit.
We are we are we are.
I really like Michael Bazzett’s poem.
I like poems where we admit
we are bad at something.
I am bad at so many things.
I cannot solve any equation.
I fail constantly at games.
I do not know the names of trees.
But I believe in being wrong.
We are meant to fail.
Or is that just my medication
speaking? Or is this all a meditation,
& I am floating as I’m typing.
I am writing on a wooden cross.
I am carving this with nails.

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Sean Thomas Dougherty‘s most recent books are Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions, and The Dead Are Everywhere Telling Us Things from Jacar Press. His Selected Poems 1994-2014 All You Ask for from Longing was published by BOA. He works as a Medtech and Caregiver in Erie, PA.

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