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The Brain’s Last Days<\/strong><\/p>\n Cracked brain, down a backstreet, And the body keeps lumping you here and there. You watch birds fly. Ultimate jealousy. What’s this? Someone’s asking your opinion on something. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n John Grey<\/strong> 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 <\/em>and Louisiana Literature.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10082,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10080\/revisions\/10082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nside alley, bottom of the dumpster.
\nThe accumulation of years of thought has
\nbroken your spirit Like Hemingway’s,
\nyou’ve had enough and the cold gun
\nbarrel can’t come soon enough.
\nMemory’s no salve. And the heart
\ncan’t get through that New England
\ngranite. So brain, why waste good blood flow?<\/p>\n
\nEven relaxed bones can’t turn the
\nold man in the head around. Sit
\nand comfort attacks. Stand and
\nmuscle sends in the bearded janitor
\nwho speaks little English to painfully swab
\nthose neuron decks. Cracked brain
\nbut the senses keep assigning you puzzles.
\nWhat’s the square root of alphabet soup?
\nWho’s in the strawberry patch with Einstein?<\/p>\n
\nWhy can’t you do that? Strap a pair of
\nwings on all that thinking and you’d
\nbe in Greenland in no time. And what
\nabout fish? Breathing underwater. Nice work
\nif you can get it. But cracked brain would
\njust sink. And you can’t run like gazelles either.
\nYou just sit there like a hunk of meat on a neck pole.
\nOne crack, two crack, three crack, four.
\nThe arbitraries are moving in. Likewise, the
\ndeadly ruminations. Maybe a belfry for
\nbats could be your best trick. Or storage space
\nfor hallucinogenic drugs.<\/p>\n
\nVoices are so damn uncaring.
\nNo brain would treat you this way.<\/p>\n