The Brain’s Last Days
Cracked brain, down a backstreet,
side alley, bottom of the dumpster.
The accumulation of years of thought has
broken your spirit Like Hemingway’s,
you’ve had enough and the cold gun
barrel can’t come soon enough.
Memory’s no salve. And the heart
can’t get through that New England
granite. So brain, why waste good blood flow?
And the body keeps lumping you here and there.
Even relaxed bones can’t turn the
old man in the head around. Sit
and comfort attacks. Stand and
muscle sends in the bearded janitor
who speaks little English to painfully swab
those neuron decks. Cracked brain
but the senses keep assigning you puzzles.
What’s the square root of alphabet soup?
Who’s in the strawberry patch with Einstein?
You watch birds fly. Ultimate jealousy.
Why can’t you do that? Strap a pair of
wings on all that thinking and you’d
be in Greenland in no time. And what
about fish? Breathing underwater. Nice work
if you can get it. But cracked brain would
just sink. And you can’t run like gazelles either.
You just sit there like a hunk of meat on a neck pole.
One crack, two crack, three crack, four.
The arbitraries are moving in. Likewise, the
deadly ruminations. Maybe a belfry for
bats could be your best trick. Or storage space
for hallucinogenic drugs.
What’s this? Someone’s asking your opinion on something.
Voices are so damn uncaring.
No brain would treat you this way.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Perceptions and Sanskrit with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Owen Wister Review and Louisiana Literature.