People always say This is worse That is worse
and pile up an incredibly awful story of “the alternative”
but it’s kind of moot because if you’re injured you’re injured
You may be in Canada with a good life a good situation
but injured is injured. Everything in the body
effects everything in the mind.
The mind will search for the injury “in itself”
and the mind always finds things, finds somethin’
Something’s not right? Must be something the mind
must search for, must be something out of balance
with one’s community, must be something wrong in the spirit,
something must just not be right about how you’re living,
and your intemperate feelings about it must be a kind
of indignity
The mind is in part like a conscience
and per times does hurt the feelings
and especially when injured
*
I’ve been singing about the pleasures of concussions for years,
but the main thing is letting go of the boltish nervous energy flow, let it go and keep swimming back through. The trauma is only trying to not have it happen again, while not believing it won’t, that’s the whole trauma; avoid concussions and you can avoid the trauma of past concussions.
*
I’ve loved my concussions completely.
They’re all now like windows to moments of life.
The memory of such things effects the same power as the present
while all the surrounding time dissolves to mere visions
of what one forgets.
*
The best of the concussions therefore
was the above ground swimming pool one
we were racing. Belle Isle View above ground pool
swimming races were immensely competitive
and they eschewed the roll and kick off
in favour of leaping onto the edge
and diving back in. Had you seen it you’d know,
spinning and kicking off wouldn’t even be competitive
with climbing the edge and leaping back and forth
in the not that large pool. Oh there were some moments
around that pool, and toe injuries, all kinds of disaster
in the surrounding community, but apart from
twisted ankles and smashed toes
nothing’d introduced quite the level trouble
of the occasion my timed leap and rotate
onto the edge missed
completely, and I went full speed
backward and downward hard
but had my chin blown upward
by the sturdy edge
popped my head right off my shoulders
i’ve been partly out of body ever since
hence my good balance
no need for a body ~ shwing ~
At the time of course, horrifying
reality was gone a single boom
the entirety of being spun or rotated
in a way akin to sirens thousands of miles faster
than I could go and i was yowling one long stream of
disconnected exclamation “wowahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
with my head rotating. My father came racing round the fences
and found me behind the far side of the pool
and I said “wohhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh”
but believed whatever the damage was
everything was fine now
because my dad had found me
Most of my other concussions no one even knew it had happened
but that one I have no idea what happened
The other concussions were just “in the stream of the action”
In one absolutely nothing was happening.
It was recess. I was standing on some ice.
I was just anywhere.
And I don’t know if it was more
than a gust of wind, a thought in my mind,
a slight slight shift of weight
and my whole body sprung upside down
and I couldn’t tell what was up or down
– the back of my head
was the first to find out
and at great velocity.
Just popped my skull
no yowling and everything silver
and to the people standing around me
no one had been looking at me
and I was now silently lying flat on my back
beholding silver
After that UFOs seemed possible
and I’ll never regret the experience.
I don’t know why, I really loved that one.
The most perfect unseen concussion ever.
Lunch recess was a full hour.
By the end of recess I was
up and about. In a way
it was restful.
Also a favorite, and maybe the most fun
and oddly least painful, but definitely
longest lasting, was the proverbial
football concussion. This awful
red clad team had a 230 pound player
far larger than all the other players
and they were a farmer school team
no finesse game, just big strong guys
up for a fight, to pulverize our skinny
team of teenagers. All we had to do
was smash this guy down every play
3 tacklers at a time and wipe him out.
It was classic farmer town football
almost no passing at all, 2 passes a game,
and just run their biggest guy up the middle.
I had talent but was entirely lazy but for fun
and just used my big bone structure and timing to tackle
never even wore a jock strap as it would inhibit
my ability to shape shift. But this 300 pound running back
was a new problem. My right side linebacker
was younger than me, stronger but smaller,
super athletic – a great player actually,
though zero interceptions, and he’d never even
think about stripping the ball off a player,
ofner was all di-rect tackle, so they’d gain
1 or 2 yards on his sidse, and 3 or 4, maybe 5 or 6
on my side, but sometimes I’d get the ball.
With the 320 red blanc mange though
finessing ball theft wasn’t going to cut it
the monstrous farm youth would just bang through
and battle on into our backfield.
You had to get 100% of bodyweight into his path
AND do something with that moment
to even get started bringing him down.
We were up about 16-7 when he comes through
on that same play again and again,
up into our left side,
and it was a rare one
I’d sorted out most of their blocking patterns
and had direct access to submarine
and had already launched
when I Was blindsided
and all in a split second
a pile up of about 9 bodies crashed together
There was a moment in the crisis of it all
where I felt the three hundred pounder’s knee
boom through my head
I think I even got a penalty
on the play
but my head was like a tuning fork
it’s why I can stare down
intimidators even to this day
memory of tuning fork mind
even when they attack
I just step aside
and let them think about it again
The next play lined up,
we’d huddled, I was still tuning fork,
they ran the same play, with the same fake
to the other running back
whom I immediately set to pursuing
the 230 pounder blew through the opening
for a big gain. We huddle and line up again
and again, the same fakes they’d run every time we’d played them
are now complete sells.
My right side linebacker comes up to me and says
“John, I’ve go to see what’s happening on your side of the field.”
So I line up at right side linebacker
and watch as he reads the play and nails the guy
for a 1 yard loss and comes back to the huddle
and suddenly I’m laughing and I look to the red team’s huddle
and at least 7 of them are peering across at us
trying to figure what happened on that play.
Next play they try it one more time
and I laugh at the fake and grind the guy down
for 2 and a half yards. And they have to punt.
“Just had to be able to see the guy,” I said.
Most concussions have been emotional,
or bike riding. But none in years
of the head variety. As you get older
you have more strokes and things
and people’s deaths or gruesome moments.
Seems to be in the fine print of life.
But sometimes it’s fun.
Oversion 
