“The brain has certainly become a rich register for narratives for self-fashioning. There are now many neurobiological technologies of self-hood, that is to say, practices that seek to mold, shape, reform, or improve aspects of one’s person – mood, emotions, cognition, desire – by acting on or through the brain. But with what consequences for personhood? Let us briefly consider perhaps the longest established of these contemporary neurotechnologies – psychopharmaceuticals.” (Abi-Rached, Rose 220)
A handful of pills
and they call this life
telling time through the devouring of
pharmaceuticals that someone
somewhere once told someone
you need this to be normal
to be a functioning member of the
human race
where does it end?
Can they simpy stop the endless
trifling of water, pill, food, sanity?
There is a sense that the soul is gone
then what is left but the brain.
Persons acting as people
while deep inside they are the mechanics
of someone’s pen swipe.
When, then, does the pain end?
Can there be an all encompassing cure for this disease
something someone somewhere can call “finished”.
For if the ones who hold our future
declare there is no soul but the brain
then there is no disease
there is no broken piece
for the brain is everything
and the one who can tell the future
is locked inside
behind a veil
of never ending
social normality
thrust down the throats
of those who seek to be one
with the natural “self”
– is there an end?