SamadhiMuse

         This moment … this moment
            maybe, when we find ourselves at some moment
         jangled, disoriented and squirming
            reaching for some composure to embrace
         maybe its the result of letting go
            in some previous moment, hours or days ago
         when in some state of bliss we fell unconscious
            to awake here, adrift, trying to connect again.
                                    gallagher
                                    26 september 83
                                    irvine,ca

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                        Flight or Fight
   We’re used to the idea of biochemical cycles; homeostatic mechanisms.
      For example, the manic-depressive swing
      or the insulin-sugar dance.
   But I, sometimes, think I feel another cycle;
      one that I wonder if it could’ve been
      the cause of my mother’s alcoholism
      or what Mary Berringer’s doctor calls depression.
   What I feel is not depression, as I think of it;
      that helpless, who gives a shit, who wants to move feeling
      of being utterly down and defeated.
   It’s more of a state of hovering, rising anxiety
      that comes on so slowly
      that you never knew it began.
   I suspect the flight-or-fight response is the cause;
      the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic
      sides of the central nervous system.
   I feel my muscles, like my anxiety, as a tight presence
      that lingers outside of my consciousness.
      A subliminal background against which my
      foreground thoughts play.
   And, playing all unawares, they assume responsibilities
      for my state of general discomfort.
      As if cause must be found in the thought
      contents of the mind.
   But, upon reflection; separating the background from the foreground
      I find the only new factor, here,
      is this insidious pervading sense of tense anxiety
      that’s risen in me, unbidden.
                                 gallagher
                                 27 september 83
                                 Orangetree

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

                     More thoughts on anxiety
   At times I’ve zeroed in on this or that as the possible cause
      my unbidden anxieties
   Lack of sleep,
      lack of exercise,
         excess of calories
            fantasizing,
               internal dialogues,
                  lack of religious faith,
                     personal inadequacies,
                        lack of women,
                           lack of people,
                              lack of privacy,
                                 and lack of personal freedoms.
   And, at some point or another, each has been vanquished for a time,
      with the possible exception of religious faith,
      and, during that time, proven to not be the answer.
   No, I suspect they each were a compounding factor
      which happened to be present at the time
      and which was labeled, guilty, by association
      rather that by causality.
                              gallagher
                              27 september 83
                              orangetree

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —