Dissociative Fugue

Dissociative Fugue

Exposition
                   Tonic (1)
        The cobblestone house on the corner
        where I lived, over a bakery,
        where the baker swore at me in thick broguish bracken
        and reached into me.
        He kept me upstairs and fed me only icing cakes
        and scones with flour fingerprints,
        and strudels and profiteroles.
        He left waxpaper flowers for me,
        in baking pans, bloomed by oil.
        I dreamed I had strong legs,
        horse-legs, the way they could
        wrap around a man and hold him there,
        but they were dough, too.
        He reached into me
        except for the last time, when he pulled
        me out. I swarmed into his
        wallowing face,
        spit the face out.
        I found a way
        to run away.

Entry of Countersubjects
                   (2)
        The war was on with the snap of a
        light switch.
        Brandy and buckshot
        was the old way, here there
        was bullets burning into dirt.
        My arms were gone,
        a long gone way from here.
        But I found a way
        to run up into the hollow under my tongue.
        Escapists keep keys
        in cracked teeth, sore
        callused cheek pockets,
        caves in the gums and
        hollows under tongues.
        I worried the war
        like a sweet that hadn’t melted away.
                   (3)
        The summer junket of tornadoes,
        the dust rush winging up.
        I saw it from a long way off
        but I hadn’t built the basement.
        Parson and sac spiders,
        and beetles and moths
        scurried over warped planks and
        my rusted hammer hands.
        The tornado took a wallowing road,
        like a river pulling the warship in,
        torn sail clouds wrecking the air,
        the twisting mast.
        I put my family
        into the broom cupboard.
                   (4)
        We poured the cement,
        and dusted it with stone
        and stamped it with a heavy rod
        to make it look more like stone.
        I came back to watch
        cement settle.
        It is a stronger feeling than my apartment’s
        beige couch whimpering like old dog’s fur.
        I walked in the cement as though
        it was seawater washed with gas station lights.
        It bound me tight,
        like when bathwater runs chilly,
        when salts and oils
        whimper down the backs of my thighs,
        when I can’t wash my hands
        when the sink is too small.
        It was four days before
        they found me.

Episode:
        face and legs and arms and tongue and hands and feet
        The sweet is a splinter.
        It runs its way deeper into the rushing body.

The Middle Entries
                   (3)
        It was not dust, it was a splintering
        and leaf boned mass,
        pressing and charging,
        sailing.
        I ran through ditchwater,
        I coughed up splinters.
                   (4)
        Pipe lines did not burst,
        no swinging steel and iron
        snapping from thronged cables
        through the wilted air.
        They quietly cut blocks
        that crumbled when I ran.
                   (2)
        The hospital was not white
        it was a dirty and pale blue
        and the putty color of tubing and flesh.
        The needle in my hand snickered at me,
        squeaked until
        I found a way
        to run away.

False Entry:
                   (3)
        I ran down ditchwater in the rust colored air when I
                   (2)
        I rode the river down the putty colored stairs when I

Stretto:
                   (4)
        Crumbs of concrete litter
        behind me but they
        are not gaslight stars
        on warshipping waves.
        I was bound for louder walls
        I was bound to pull my feet out
                   (2)
        I pulled the tubing out.
        The bag clunked behind me,
        dripping all its water
        tasted a little sour sweet,
        like the war that’s tucked up
                   (3)
        Inside the broom cupboard
                   (4)
        I was bound by my feet by myself

Episode:
        face and legs and arms and tongue and hands and feet
        They reached inside

Final Entry of Tonic
                   (1)
        My legs were dough
        but I found a way to run on them.
        Street lamps gone green when I ran
        or crunched or waded
        or crawled down cobblestones
        or they had been cobblestones
        when I had walked into that bakery for the first time
        and I went upstairs
        and from then it was only sugared daisies
        and hordes of chocolates
        shaped like little spiders and free things, only ever
        dough and jelly and crumbs,
        and the reaching in.

Stretto:
        But I found a way
        and no one knows who pulled out the sweet
        little raisin eyes
        that were bound in so tight.

Coda
        face and legs and arms and tongue and hands and feet
        They reach inside and pull
        out the splinter,
        a long gone way from here.