Bright Poet Queen

Brain Damaged

1.
Facing myself as I always do.
It is time for soul searching,
truth revealing.
Living with stigma.
Facing myself as I always do.
Living with stigma.
I am brain damaged.  I have been since birth.
Living with stigma.
Facing myself as I always do.
Scorn, pity, understanding
the know nothing knowing look.
As soon as I reveal the fact
people assume they know motives
for all I do or say (and still I believe them)
. Living with stigma.
Facing myself as I always do.
Living with stigma.
Brain damaged.

2.
I am a madman on the path
of spirtual development.
I can afford neither optimism
nor pessimism.  I can afford neither
the either, or, the or.
The facts of subatomic particle physics
and cosmology reveal as much
as Joshu's "Mu."
But, I am a madman.  And madmen
often know the difference
between right and wrong,
but don't care.

3.
What is the difference between one drug
and another?  Thorazine, ritlin,
marijuana, peyote.
The psychotropic effects alter
conscious perception, unconscious reaction.
What is the difference between
ingested euphoria, or at least quietude,
and a series of biophysical
changes in hormone producing glands?
Schizophrenics produce their own
chemicals that alter
conscious perception, unconscious reaction.
It is much cheaper.
Don Juan, Doctor Feelgood, Joseph Campbell, Aldous Huxley.
from reality (the underlying principle
is there is nothing there)
to unordinary reality, to enforced return
to reality (still nothing there) to the total
divorce from reality.
All this has been likened to the soul's
journey to perfection, to enlightenment.
Madman, fool, holy man.
"Is the artist all that different from the mad?"
"Is religious experience all that different
from madness?"
Politics would have us believe so.
This is a world where faith has replaced
direct experience.
And we are taught that it is natural
to hate one's mother, love one's father,
and that to be mature is to break away
from the mother and father.
According to whose prceptions?
The only constant is the speed of light.
I can never be sure of where you are
when you are doing something.
You can never be sure of what I am doing
when I'm someplace.
Victimized and victimizer.
Observer and observed.
We study each other.
I am told that is natural
for a patient to feel hostile
to the analyst.  Are you so
sure of your reality?
Which of us will eventually
appear the madder?
Observer and the observed
change roles so rapidly, so subtly,
so often.  Who is projecting unto whom?
What is the difference between
one perceiver and another?

4.
Ambiguity.  My heart misgives me,
my conscious thoughts deny my heart.
Ambiguity.  The analytical at war
with intuition.
Ambiguity.  The observer and the observed.
My heart misgives me,
my conscious thoughts deny my heart.
I digress into a diatribe
about how society treats the brain damaged.
Ambiguity.  The clinical and the pastoral.
My greatest fear is to one day
look up and have people staring at me
because I did something weird.
My heart misgives me,
my conscious thoughts deny my heart.

5.
The lotus blossom opens
and explodes into fantastic light.
I am a madman on the path
of spiritual development.
What do I see?
What do I believe I see?
The colors of the chakras,
penis and vulva.
How can I achieve Nirvana
when my brain dysfunctions periodically?
The lotus blossom opens
and explodes into fantastic light.
I am dizzy from contemplating
the working of infinity.
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Unbalance and balance.
My heart and my brain.
If heart is guided by brain,
then does not my heart also
dysfunction periodically?
If brain is guided by heart,
then am I truly brain damaged?
If neither rules the other,
then how am I to reconcile the conflict
and have them consult one another?
No part is greater than the whole.
But, for the whole to function
don't all the parts have to be working properly?
Alternate edition theory makes
relating to the real difficult.
Is this me, or another me I'm observing?
Have I switched places and consciousness,
or formed an alliance and psychic bond?
The lotus blossom opens
and explodes into fantastic light.

By
TiegrSanke