ASPIE

I have been this my whole life

Whether this had a name or has one

Is independent

Brain is an Asperger’s spectrum poet certified professional accountant

In other words a platypus

The drumroll symptoms of a syndrome:

Lack of eye contact, interpretation of body language, social cues

(I.E. the conundrum of flirting)

All feels fake, sycophantic, small talk, fuck not again

Bullshitting, colloquial banter; throw me in the wood chipper

Let me speak in poetry six leagues deep

Hide in plain sight, analogies and metaphors

Coping mechanisms to find a native current

Adherence to rules, principled like an extreme sport

Didn’t understand even after I got my faced bashed in

And refused to throw a punch; goodbye permanent teeth

Mouth is blockade flipper denture adolescence  

Felt my participation in the world outside my head

Always seemed entirely arbitrary to others

Ant in the hill, no home for me

I remember what I felt like almost any year of my life

Some ASPIE might take to rote memory of maps or factoids

I got ASPIE poet; I sculpt feelings like photographs printed on this paper heart

Sensitivity to environment

Mint, chocolate, bubblegum, never eat or smell, Yuk!

Rubbing alcohol causes Vasovagal reaction

Sleep in complete darkness

Low talker on the phone, “Thank you mam’s”

Please do not casually touch me

I could tell you about any NFL player from 1980 to 2000

Beat any Nintendo game for rent like a rodent in a maze

Every Magic the Gathering card or Simpson’s reference

Pedantic little professor goes off when on track

Silent most of the day

Peer to peer, ha!, at eleven give me an adult

At twenty-five give me dead writers

A lexicon to fill an ocean with notebooks

My favorite gift my mother every gave me was an electronic pocket dictionary

In sixth grade that I still tote daily to work

Alien on the wrong planet

Could not tie my shoes until third grade

Atrocious handwriting, could not manipulate fingers to play a guitar

If Dylan and Springsteen said, “Hey, want to learn?”

ASPIE spectrum did not grab empathy though

I got Superman x-ray vision

I see past the surface see your heart in the depths

Beating at one with the universe

Analyze every piece of stimuli

Between life history, foot position, career choice, habits

Poems on what I am bound to misinterpret will be there in spades digging my grave

Because I’m bluffing like a sweaty champ

But I would rather be a living poem and make you a muse

Than attempt to participate in the normal game, because I am not built to compete on the surface

The emotions go hells deep wandering into a warehouse imagination

To turn the corner and the shelves appear from the darkness like crabs in an oceanic trench

Relationships, huh? In thirty-five years I don’t need two hands to count

Spent lunch in libraries from junior high to college

Reading passing every subject but schoolyard

Selective mutism (Them no, these few everything)

Pragmatism too much work to try

Obsess internal surf poem waves

Nothing feels real but the existential universe found through the self

How many pages?  Text me a note, I’ll send you thirty

Quid pro quo, you know, you know?

Not a disease, no pill, just me

No cure, no standardized test

Just an ASPIE spectrum poet accountant platypus

Saying hello