BLANK SLATE

 

I took an O. D. which they said was genius of me

to survive but coming back down I lost the ability

to ejaculate. I came down from a great height

to the goldfish bowl of quotidian consciousness;

to status life detail; to the boring smell of water;

to the daily soap opera which we all float through

in a state of endlessly contemporary amnesia -

but something had changed. Fiery concentration

seemed vacated, dissipated, diluted. The voices

were fewer and further between. My mother

then retired from a long and underpaid career

in Care looking after the senescent up here. She

now has to keep my medication in a locked safe.