ideas accelerate to the surface
like air bubbles
from whence they came,
i cannot say
they passed up from below
the lit sea
from the darkness
maybe, like air bubbles,
they follow a mostly straight path,
but i cannot say for certain
what happens below the light
i catch only the vapor that drifts up
out of the popping bubbles
and it must be gathered quickly
before it spreads on the wind,
becoming lukewarm nothing...
damn increasing entropy!
My brain is an angry sac of neurons:
hot wired / electrified.
Sizzling synapses ready to snap
and spew seedy scenes
upon this world.
But no one hears a scream
in the dark void of a barren mind:
though the scream radiates outward
as a painful wave of unknown
origin & purpose,
a tremor in the fabric of us
What's a Self?
...a soul?
...a set of neuronal activity?
...an illusion?
...a ghost in a machine?
...the body, the brain, &
the whole enchilada?
Memories can be false,
and some always are.
Thoughts can be illusory,
and some always are.
Feelings can be flighty & fickle,
and some always are.
If one loses a little toe,
is one a diminished self,
or still whole?
What about if one loses
a pinky toe-sized mass of brain?
So many possibilities:
...death,
...changed personality,
...emotionlessness,
...speech pathologies,
...blindness,
...memory loss,
...coma,
...no discernable change,
and so on.
What's a Self?
...a dog?
...an embryo?
...an AI?
...an extraterrestrial?
What is a self?
Am I a self?
A ship
crosses the ocean,
in the darkness:
darkness, black & endless
no moon,
no stars,
just clouds -- thick & low
clouds that can't be seen
The ship has lights,
but those lights know
an event horizon
Lights sometime
glint against the waves,
those roiling & undulating
waves,
and the lights bounce off
the ship's hull
But no one can see them,
because if anyone could see them,
the seers would be seen--
unless theirs is a ghost ship,
piloted by literal ghosts,
or some other agent of observation
Maybe there is fog --
not enveloping the ship,
(such mist would be felt
on the skin of those on deck)
but, rather, a fog between
where the ship is,
and where is should be
For it is surely off course,
listlessly drifting,
all hope arrayed against edges:
edges of ice
&
edges of the world
Not that the world is flat,
but, perhaps, it's not fully sculpted:
maybe nothing lies outside
the range of the seen:
outside the bounds of experience
It sounds crazy,
but all kinds of crazy
form in a mind
submerged in darkness
lost in a disembodied
Bardo state
fantastical happenings
mainlined into consciousness
with a side of swirling
phantasm
and all the angry demons
and all the faceless gods
churn around the periphery