Petit Mal Poem by Martha Zweig

Dire symptom, to wake up
in a headache, plus I forget what it's of.
Afflictions' placebos rev & throb down neural
runaways whose fancy flights collide:
let the airport owls win one. Empires away,
let the ragtag militants win one.

Or my nerves keen for a cigarette.
I'd pinch it in half, or some passerby's
castoff goodsize butt. Distract: o
rememberize to me my first truelove,
the one not you, but I hasten I do
truelove you too- ever a next angelic & silkish

razzledazzle about, as if each brushoff-my-
shoulder might shrug itself into a wing.
As a scatter of barley summons insipid
soup to its next ingredient, so kicks-in
in-this-moment's flashmob & whoops along
snarling a traffic of orange flagpersons at play.