My head is dead.
After a flash of electricity in my brain
Am I the same?
My head feels dead.
I understand the words said, and can’t explain
Why it feels dead.
My head may not be dead.
I can interpret and explain.
Perhaps my memory is the same,
But my head feels dead.
Doors get knocked at midnight
To gentlemen’s delight.
While neighbours gossip, left and right …
I felt no cold breath of Death
Nor the Reaper’s skeletal hand.
Yet he greeted me
And I mumbled and tumbled
And found myself on the cold ground
Where all are bound.
Death can command us all.
When he calls man must fall.
He greeted me in jest.
But he will tire of play
And I will find rest
For Death he ends all play.
After the hospital
I walked in the rain again,
But did not regret the wet,
For the dead
Feel no rain.
I know a young lady of Kampala
Who works in a massage parlour.
Her name it is Sky
And she’s so incredibly shy
And she works in a massage parlour …
I heard birds in the hospital.
I thought their calls
Came to me through solid walls.
But the doctor said
The birds I heard where recorded sound.
Yet it was profound
For when I am dead
There will be no sound to hear
Of birds or friend’s words.
I cast no shadow on the ward
So will walk in sunshine
While there is time.
An electrical impulse in my brain gone awry.
A jumble of incoherent words heard by friends.
Will I die?
My speech comes back.
A memory gap.
But not a stroke.
In the hospital it comes on again
With no pain.
The words are clear. I feel no fear
Just frustration that people can not hear
What I want to say.
How long will I stay
A cyborg on a hospital ward
Tangled in wires?
These fires in my brain
Will they return again?
Discharged with a diagnosis of seizure
With more pills to add to my store.
Will the electricity in my brain
Misfire again and seizure end in …
Will I always be
The man who recites poetry
To young women,
My mind half on poetry,
And half on sinning.
They may admire my poetry,
But I am told
I grow old
And girls who have time
For my rhyme
Will never love me.
Yet they love my poetry
And is not poetry
Part of me?
I know a young lady named Miss Plumb
Who likes to spank blokes on their bum.
You ask, “is it nice?”.
I say, “its my vice!
And its strictly between me and Miss Plumb!”
As I walk the solid path
And pass trees waving in the wind.
I sway, and think of yesterday
When Romans came in wind and rain.
Did they think all will stay
As they made their way
Along This path of passing dreams?
I can not say
But the wind will outlast me
And the swaying tree.
K Morris - Poet 