Nerve Pulses

THE RHYTHMS PRONOUNCE THEMSELVES THEN VANISH by Dean Young

After they told me the CT showed
there was nothing wrong with my stomach
but my heart was failing, I plunked
one of those weird 2 dollar tea balls
I bought in Chinatown and it bobbed
and bloomed like a sea monster and tasted
like feet and I had at this huge
chocolate bar I bought at Trader Joe’s
and didn’t have to answer the door even though
I could see it was UPS and I thought
of that picture Patti took of me
in an oval frame. Sweat itself
is odorless, composed of water,
sodium chloride, potassium salts,
and lactic acid, it’s bacterial growing
on dead skill cells that provides the stink.
The average lifespan of a human taste bud
is 7 to 10 days. Nerve pulses
can travel up to 170 miles an hour.
All information is useless.
The typical lightning bolt
is one inch wide and five miles long.