Renee Ingersoll

As Poetry Recycles Neurons

5/20/13

Neuro Reverie

“…the twenty-first century brain is not an organ whose fate is fixed at the moment of conception and birth, but is a plastic and open to external influence throughout development and indeed throughout life.”
(Rose and Abi-Rached, Neuro; 217 (Chiao 2009))

Today I was reading a blog called ‘Humans of New York’
The guy Takes photographs of people and then asks them questions.
One picture had these two kids sitting backs against a building.
The girl looked my friend Bailey and had the most beautiful smile on her face
The boy had a clump of red curly hair, shaven on the sides
leg outstretched with neon green tape around his boot
He looked like he wanted to laugh because she was.
That moment where laughter becomes contagious
The quote under said
“Where did you grow up?”
“We’re growing up right now.”
It made me cry
There’s beauty in change
and i’ve been thinking lately that we were all born to die
in the literal and poetic way
but i’m beginning to think we die
because living is a process
if there’s no end
there’s no process.
My mom told me I cried every birthday when I was little
I’d tell her
“I’m one year closer to dying.”
But I have to live to die
Maybe that’s what growing up is,
Realizing living life includes death
A needed part of the equation.
And as humans, our potential to change is phenomenal
So I shant waste this plasticity
on why the world is so bad
and why my death is to imminent.

Renée Ingersoll

As Poetry Recycles Neurons

5/14/13

Neuro Reverie

Neuro Reverie

“..The criminal as, anatomically and physiologically, an organic anomaly.”
(Rose and Abi-Rached, Neuro; 169)

“During the last fifteen years there is no specific work in criminal anthropology to be recorded…”
(Rose and Abi-Rached, Neuro; 169)

Call me a criminal anthropologist,
working with those anatomic
physiologic
anomalies
you call delinquents
I’ve ridden the ride
without the jail time
just the person on the other end of that payphone
hoping it will only be months, not years

Call me a criminal anthropologist
whose fallen in love with her subjects
once she saw the other side of their dark moons
why they’re even pushing to begin with
which moms and dads were
abusive
alcoholics
crack addicts
or just too young for parenting
hoping they won’t turn out like them

Call me a criminal anthropologist
torn between my real world
and trying to pull them out of the game
if everyone knew them like I do
they wouldn’t be looked down upon
in that way that stops them from trying to get jobs
one felony doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to eat
without food stamps
or flipping molly for gas station food

Call me a criminal anthropologist
but i’d rather be called their friend