That smile is all I ever needed to inherit from you.
Mom,
I’m proud of you for finding the eye of the human hurricane; I’m proud of you for putting an end to what hurts; most of us can’t even find a poultice let alone a release. I now know that if I were to look at your suicide vehemently; in sadness; remorse; lack; less than; pain; that I am only saying “you’re suicide made my reality more difficult to accept” and with that understanding I am proud that you took off; I’m proud that you made your reality something that you knew how to accept; mine is fine; I’m doing well; I’m a sign language interpreter now; you’re still my mother because how I knew you was in a way that no other could have which means…
Shhh…
Don’t tell anyone…
You’re still here in my heart and mind; no one can take you away from me; not even you…
I love you more than I love poetry; than I love to learn about the cosmos; than I love to build things; than I love to garden; than I love to interpret; don’t worry, your secret is safe with me; I won’t tell anyone that you were never capable of dying…
Looking through old typewritten papers I keep finding these odd ones typed on the back of really strange photocopied magazine adds; in 2002 I am working in the library at the Univ. of New Orleans filing old magazines; my boss; Hurricane Florence; had me photocopy to archive millions of these strange adds. I would keep a copy and take it home to use as poem paper. This poem paper just happens to be an ode to Eliot.
The smile is of content, of radiance in acomplishing
an open book breeze slicking back your hair
fanning you.
You could see with your glasses if only you had eyes.
and your clothing will never become fresher, never un-mothed,
like mothers tells us, 'stop picking at it'
Let your pocket blow it's own nose
the world lays top sided and languid outside your windows
a slight blue of where 'now' will take you
However, there is falsity to this world,
perhaps it is mirrored without you near
or backwards (I'm sorry, i see xxx only rings on strings)
but still i return to that x madening glare
you seem to me as if you are the breeze, and the book is blown over by you
yet still, somewhere in the darkness you are dreaming, of wasted lands
You arex spotted upon stripes round that neck,
some striating your collars perpendicularing your apple, & most are hidden
because of your overly properxxxx aproach to looking to much like you.
Smiling, breathing, blind, hearing, smelling, and holding on to life
yet walking, you may not do, never again will you promanade your way
threw my park, nor my chess game,
xxxxxxx i remember someone once told me why you added the S to your name
because backwards,
it would have spelled toilet.
What label has been given to you? I know mine. I know the words; I know the labels; I know the criteria. This is what my PCP calls Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; the thing that this is trying to describe is something I call; Running From Zero. After 3 years of daily Adderall dosages of 10mg/2x daily I found myself no closer to being able to calm down my hyperactivity and control my attention than I was in the first place; the hyperactivity on Adderall only manifested itself in bruxism and a tightening of my muscles and mood; I could focus; I could zero in on some-thing and that would be the focus for me…
But I was just running from a different Zero.
ADHD is a label to describe something that the animal side of me is doing; it’s panicking; it’s wild; it doesn’t know how to behave as a human; it’s just faking it. ADHD describes that sense; the loss of calm; the loss of self; the loss of control.
Running From Zero is my word for it because it’s how it makes sense to me in a senseless world.
My Zero is a calm; it’s also a sphere; the sphere of everything my senses are feeding me; the present rumble of the AC unit mixed with the chirping of cicadas outside; the sense of the chair touching my ass, legs, elbow, back; I can see what I am typing and I feel the keys beneath my fingers and I can smell the Coumarin Pipe Tobacco I use for my vaporizer pen; I can taste that too. This place here; this is my Zero right now. This moment; living in the Now; this is my Zero.
I am not centered on an axis between attention and a deficiency of it; I am not a 2 dimensional zero on a + and – axis of hyperactive and calm; I am a sphere of my senses that collapse into a specific focus; I have many axis on which I may travel; X, Y, Z.
When I leave my Zero I become anxious; I lose my connection to my calm; I feel lost amongst a vast depth of stars and chaos as cosmos; when I find myself in my Zero; I know the world goes on; I know the universe continues to universe; I know that wars are fought; I know that I love; I know that the Hubble Space Telescope should be funded; I know what is happening in the south; I know who my neighbors are.
With ADHD or when Running From Zero; the calm breaks; severely; I carry with me a nervous energy that feels like I’m inside of a Fisher-Price Brilliant Basics Corn Popper.
When I don’t run from Zero I find my calm; I am within a sphere of my immediate senses and the frightening world that I do my best to be a part of dissolves; I am only me as I carry my Zero with me; nothing is frightening here; nothing is a trigger; there is no anxiety; this is where I can love from.
This video shows (better than I could have hoped) the sensation of having ADHD; not allowing ADHD to have me that is; I have it; by the throat and I’m telling it; your name is Zero.
Taking my PCP’s label and, instead, naming it in the way I understand it gives me the control I require; I don’t have a daily medication doing it for me; I have me; in my Zero; doing it for me.
The art is allways a long process; the process itself though; that’s the art. The image at the end; that’s only the result; this video is me; me; fully enveloped by Zero; fully still in Zero; fully calm in Zero; knowing that if I run from it – it runs with me – so I keep it.
-...Running From Zero...+ 