i have been a little overwhelmed lately, but made a moment to jot down a poem. it feels better when spoken aloud:

[Dislexia]

Numbers are a rhythm and I feel them in my bones

They mean nothing,

they are out of their order

they are hissing like bluecrabs

My boss says I’m no good at this desk job, my boss says pay more attention.

I am all done doting (add) and my mind is elsewhere—we go away

From the white walls and the cold calls when business makes us angry

—It’s just numbers, how can numbers make anyone anything but money—

It’s not just numbers it’s the shore rolling over and over

Hight-tide-noon low-tide5’15.

I am certain the moon does not keep a calendar

I am certain the ocean is without a ledger.

But the numbers always follow

Like a hangover, rolling frothy wide, a thick-glide of algae-weed.

In the evening I try to account hours, work and play—eight trips to the toilet.

I wonder if the toilet keeps a ledger. I don’t do Sudoku in the bathroom anymore:

I could count to 9 and have only 8 numbers—012345679—damn, I’m sure I’m dislexic,

               //I spell it wrong every time//

I find the best solution is to shrug and evoke my gender.

I am allowed to be bad at cars and math, and sometimes at driving.

But I better dress well,

I want to rush into the wade-pool naked—disrupt all the hermits in their conch shells.

I wish food was my only concern and not numbers. I am bad at finances, so I evoke my

Dislexia and tell my father, who has lent me—once again—money that: I am a poet.

Which absolves me of resource, I say, I will be immortal, he says, pay more attention, I say…

Daddy, and lie.

—ECW