Normally people claim to like
New things. However, this is
Not always the case.
Neuropharmacologists have found that high levels of
Norepinephrine can alter minds to cause other
Neurotransmitters to direct thoughts along
Non-divergent paths so that the old is preferred and
Now reject any changes to environment.
Naturally people will take a
Noncommittal approach to all of this by denying all of this if asked
Negotiations will then take place to elicit the truth from these
Nonconformists who feel that anything said will be printed in the latest
Newsletter for Neurological Sciences which will make them appear to be
Neurotic
Neophytes. They may feel they have to inhale copious amounts of
Nitrous Oxide to regain their sense of
Normalcy. But this is being
Naïve.
No amount of a drug will allow them the
Novel lifestyle they so enjoy.
It arrives not as a slow dawn, but a fracture—
A sudden, violent tearing of the gray,
Where neurotransmitters leap in manufactured rapture,
And logic bends to the blinding light of day.
It is a temporary kingdom built on air,
A frantic, soaring, breathless, desperate high,
Ignoring the foundation of despair,
To watch the mundane world dwindle and die.
The heart becomes a drum with an accelerated beat,
Distorting time until the seconds, stretch and bend,
A breathless rush, a sweet and sharp deceit,
That promises a joy without an end.
It is the apex where the self dissolves,
A chemical, ethereal, phantom grace,
Where gravity loses its hold, and ego solves,
Into a momentary, breathless, liminal space.
But at its peak, the architecture starts to lean,
For all ascension mandates a return,
The higher the flight, the deeper the machine
Must crash when the bright, burning engines turn.
Euphoria is a loan, a borrowed debt,
A fleeting, dazzling, brilliant, stolen breath,
That leaves the trembling, wakeful mind to fret,
In the quiet, cold, inevitable aftermath of death.
Faint flame emergent from neurotransmitters.
The brain, a torch arranging patterns of awareness,
patterns of recall, encounters, adventures, and ordeals.
Covert consciousness realized in coma patients,
detected in vegetative invalids by the analyzers
of EEGs, the probers of the mind.
Bedridden with no signs of life,
These sufferers were long thought braindead.
The only question; when to withdraw life support.
But our deepest traces do often linger with immobility.
Our hardly perceptible scintillas send measurable signals.
They offer no bodily changes, no responses to cues.
They never give themselves away in behaviors.
Yet, science now knows them as genuine.
Are these the souls and ghosts felt by our ancestors?
Are these the wraiths and apparitions feared
by so many?
Created from the temporal, assembled from
life, is their structure entirely in the mind?
Maybe part of their energy resides in other realms,
places in and out of which they drift at our death.
Accepted for publication: The Opiate Journal, spring 2023
A resilient addict with corona
Believes he is immune as a stoner
Puts Mary Jane on the mask
And Jimmy Beam in his flask
Fortifies his deluded persona
Quite soon though his supply is depleted
In withdrawal he feels so mistreated
Smokes sanitizer
And fertilizer
Wrapped in loo roll not to be defeated
Neurotransmitters cause havoc and pain
When the lockdown forces him to refrain
He chokes on puke bile
Transforms for a while
Self-harms until his bloody wrists are slain
Meanwhile a former spirits abuser
Thinks back to awful years as a boozer
No more hangover
Craving is over
She's past being a paranoid looser
Seclusion focusses on true virtues
In quarantined times of imposed curfews
She draws a frontier
Clean sober and clear
Freedom of sound mind with nothing to loose
She combines pure logic and emotions
Does no longer rely on fake potions
She does not request
Others to detest
But found her soul and abstinent notion
09th April 2020
Laps and Gaps in My Synapse
Synapse definition, a region where nerve impulses
are transmitted and received, encompassing the axon
terminal of a neuron that releases neurotransmitters
in response to an impulse, an extremely small gap
across which the neurotransmitters travel, and the
adjacent membrane of an axon, dendrite, or muscle
or gland cell with the appropriate receptor molecules for picking up the neurotransmitters.
Having difficult time writing poems lately.
I may have absorbed many nightcaps,
And ended up with lapse in my synapse;
Are correct;
Memory affect,
While cause more and more mishaps.
Jim Horn
Young Boy in Heat
I remember when I was a kid
Maybe twelve or thirteen years old
Just on the edge of pubescence and
Becoming aware of my own sexuality
Drawn to girls for the first time and
Finding them compelling and different
Every sense jumping up when one
Entered a room I was hanging out in
Leaving me with an odd feeling in
My lower belly, confusion reigning
In my brain and emotions as to why
And it wasn’t long after my awareness
Of girls that I discovered women
I was a Libra with hormones rising
And almost anything became the fodder
For major teenage sexual fantasies
I was checking out my mother’s friends
Not to mention my friend’s mothers
I was obsessed and testosterone ran amok
The scent of perfume or powder
Scrambling my neurotransmitters
Smelling like notes from a smokey
Jazz record on an old phonograph
Prominent in a picture on the wall
I’ve chased that mystery since the
First hair appeared on my chest and
It’s rendered me a very happy man...
Love is not love,
but chemical reaction;
neurotransmitters bathed in endorphins.
People lie because they choose it,
medicate themselves against barren truth:
there can be no life without oxygen,
no faith without physical remedy,
no union of two souls
without the rush of electricity to the brain.
Show me beauty;
I'll show you spinal impulses
to blind the eye.
Tell me a story of two lovers
with mutual admiration and respect;
I'll try to forget that wishes are acids
numbing the brain
to all things cruel and ugly.
If I were a painter, no not that kind
But I am kind as I let you crack into a crevice in my warm-blooded heart,
I would pick up those brushes and paint your flesh as a buckskin colt,
and analogy would float
through the chemicals in my mind-- those neurotransmitters, dopamine especially--erecting new memories hard-wiring images of experience-- of a boy who seems to run like like a colt
I see it now dessert sands in a blur off in the distance
I see the the sands billow in storms at the hooves and the scintillating sun outlines the penumbral essence of your radiant form
creating a motion picture of beauty so great, great enough to burst my heart and set fire to the sky
And my temperance will go challenged as I swim in your beauty.
Your devotion is the poison I trust
Passion burns with atomic thrust
The vacuum you left fills with rust
I hate how I miss you – it’s lust
This love for centuries lost
This is forever at last
The signal left my neurotransmitters
A thousand light years separates us
I boil in this cold distance
Imploding in your absence
I’m oil in this dark circumstance
Deprived of your life force
On a mission to your galaxy
To rekindle our lost intimacy
Girl, you know we gel in ecstasy
Gravity pulls me toward your chemistry
You’re the black hole to test my integrity
You’re the gene to extend my longevity
I’m absolute zero in this loneliness
Launched in-between time and space
So, you’ve heard about the other satellite
Well girl, she means nothing, just moonlight
You know nothing burns bright enough
To ignite the light you shine into my life
Once more without sleep
all dreams exhausted
Neurotransmitters on high alert
rekindling furious flames
that lap hungrily through mid-back to feet
Like a chippy chiseling wood on the lathe
I splinter and crack - screaming for regression
Just as a computer malfunctioning
I await time for reboot of my system
brief medical intervention -
some respite peace and solace
that in the whole of life
taken as one performance of the arts
it is but a musical interlude
short-lived in high anticipation of entr'acte
Terms used:-
chippy - a carpenter
solace - relief from emotional distress/source of comfort at a time
of sadness, grief or disappointment
interlude - short period of transition/break
entr'acte - between the acts
this wicked thing that breaks all the rules and slips into your
DNA strand
that holds onto you with all it's might till you give up and lose the fight
this wicked thing was me once but can slip into you and you and you.
this wicked thing is a twisted maze with danger waiting when you turn the page
it's in you want it out but no matter how much you scream and shout the wicked thing
will not get out.
the wicked thing is not a simple thing of cells and synapses and neurotransmitters. It
is the mind going mad till your sick of it and you put the gun to your head then it's
lights out. the wicked thing has stopped n but so have you. just something to think about
when the wicked thing seeks you out
This chemical cocktail
with neurotransmitters
pinging and bathing in sweet serotonin
like honey gone melted
transcended, eccentric
compulsory eyes are concocted and bent
Henna tattoos
from a black bellied bowl
still glittering red, crushing dust in the lungs
Bottled receptors
invisible potion
fizzy, instinctive, I want you around.
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