Fever playing jump rope in my mind.
I’d lie in bed, skull hammering.
Blankets off, then on, then off, then on.
The old maple desk waits.
Notebooks stacked up, snickering.
To-do list growing larger.
And I know perfectionists don’t rest.
I start dictating to my secretary.
Get rid of all those fucking commas.
There’s too many em dashes.
Damn it, I’m a professional writer.
She jumps, claws flashing,
chasing pretend friends under the dresser.
Wait a second. Bukowski, my cat,
not my secretary.
Of course I don’t have a secretary.
And if I did, I wouldn’t be lucky
to have her in bed with me.
I hear a faint knock on the back door.
I can’t be sure if it’s real
or part of my febrile madness.
I get up, stagger through the hallway,
stumbling on one of the other cats
by the kitchen door.
Sweat stings my eyes.
Cussing like a drunk poet.
Although I’ve been sober for three years.
Open the door.
It’s the landlord.
I grab him the rent money.
Thank him.
Tell him I probably have COVID.
He wouldn’t want to be around me in this diseased state.
Just then, Shadow runs out the back door.
I push past him, start jogging after her.
Her tail flicks.
She’s looking at squirrels, sparrows.
I finally catch her, panting, shaking.
I sit at my desk.
The computer hums to life.
I start typing.
The page seems patient.
I pound it out anyway.
Lines bleed into nonsense.
I hit delete.
Words wobble, stumble, fall.
Rise again.
I swallow vitamins like bullets:
echinacea, ginseng, some root
a half-deranged friend swore would work.
I don’t know if they’re senile
or if I’m chasing miracles.
I sip lukewarm coffee.
It tastes like tepid bathwater.
I wipe sweat from my forehead.
My hands shake across the keys.
But the words come anyway.
I write fever into the page.
Self-pity, frustration, absurdity, humor.
Something.
I glance at the page.
It’s a mess.
Jagged. Alive. Ragged characters.
My fucking body aches.
I rewrite a line, cross it out, circle it again.
The perfectionist can’t rest.
The pages must be complete.
I pray somehow, someway,
I’m able to make sense of this poem.
I cough, choke.
Try to remember the last time I felt well.
The cats doze in the late afternoon sun.
Apathetic.
I reach for the vitamin C again.
My lungs burn.
My head pounds.
The fever stalks me like a toxic lover.
And still I sit here, in this chair,
at this maple desk.
Each word a tiny battle.
Each line a victory over the scrambled, aching brain.
The page is complete.
The poem’s done.
It’s twisted and alive.
The perfectionist heads back to bed.
That is definitely writing the fever. The frenzy of thought mirrors the aches, throbbing head and randomness of thought. I tried to write with a migraine once…didn’t work. This totally did!
Powerfully penned, Thomas. An excellent write with outstanding imagery my friend. It’s an adventure trying to write with a fever, not that I’ve done it successfully often, it usually ends up with me deleting the whole thing, and trying to sleep off and on till my fever breaks. Very relatable read my friend. Appreciate you.
Damian
You wrote with the feverish mastery that you put into your superbly etched words. And I must say the wit here is just fantastic. I have to grin while this poem flowed like a night in the hot house of viral infection. Truly a poem written with great vibrancy and vitality. You are a man of letters who knows his craft and does it well.
John