Medicine Head

My brain is lodged in the trash compactor,

unmoved by children’s Tylenol.

I stare, glassy-eyed, at a blank and patronizing screen

wondering

will I ever coax this contraption to do my bidding?

Saliva snags the back of my gullet, and travels like a barbed mouse through a snake.

Thick rivers of mucus dislodge all thought from rational moorings

and press angrily against the inside of my face.

One more attempt to form a sentence and I’ll erupt–

Vesuvius-style–

without Pliny to document my self-destruction.