They used to call them
shrinks in slang.
This was a term when I was little.
And couch time or psycho-
analysis, psyche-ologists, undoctors with talk shows
was all the rage this term,
shrink,
made me think of voodoo, a secret serum from
head doctors. But nowadays we have BRAIN,
and the human genome project, AI and h-3
And thankfully,
someone just told me
something is happening to the frontal cortex,
of the human being-being busy;
because busyness wrecks
real concentration.
It could be fake news, you choose.
Once upon a time,
I remember memorizing phone numbers.
I remember every license plate
on every vehicle in my name,
but those were just a labels
like shovel and couch, doctor or woman
and I dug in deeper and found it is true. All of it.
It is frightening.
This cannot be happening, it must be only temporary.
What does it matter if we forget-
this too shall pass as short term.
I don't know anymore.
Always being right
tends to make one go in tiny circles.
Fear was all the rage.
And instead of screaming
Fire, or
Liar,
the roof began to crumble under
the weight of the clodded up canvasing
sky gathering clumps in furious spouts
of dirty watercolor,
meant to stir us.
Iron bars,
lashing at the trees and they scream.
It Is
eerie, some never heard it coming
or understood what it said.
(SH, RBTL, SITD?)
Terminal. The terminal. Terminus.
Communication was the key.
And oration from alabaster towers of babble flow,
throwbacks, boomerangs and borrowed times,
did not fit all skeletons.
It is a combination lock anyway.
Radical is bad, gay is not happy, no mo FOMO,
do NOT wear a hoodie or hijab,
protest and appoint, Act Now, undemocratically,
incivility as seen on TV versus Reality,
no need to worry.
Temporary occupations are hiring the easily entertained
or unemployed tools, oft utilized by
tightening nuts down to nationalism,
and their infallible dependence.
I forgot why I came in here, I forgot these are all names.
I forgot all the names. I forgot my name. I forgot this was the same.
I forgot to go. I forgot my place.
Then it came to me,
only temporarily.
It should be powered down, rebooted, then defragged
down to one, for focus. Ahead, and swollen baubles or egos,
ergo,
what does it mean to grow smaller
over time, we cannot even wrap our head around
astronomical units, lightning years.
or by electro-therapy injections we become
shorter, shorting out,
shrinking from commitment
to deep time.
Slang was just another name
for small.
All the time
shrinking.
Image By Paul François Arnold Cardon, Photograph of the French psychologist Pierre Janet (1859–1947) by Paul François Arnold Cardon a.k.a. Dornac (1858–1941).
