SamadhiMuse

                        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 —

      My moods come swinging harder
         more brutal between the good places
      eye fogged anxious days
         women who turn me like a card in solitaire
      Hours that wait like wounds
         and demand confrontation, wine or madness
      I still hear Bhagwan and the Sufi’s
         still remember Monika and Nirala
      I can still see Danny and Chris’ and Rose’s eyes
         but here, where my moments are mine
      I come down to some line
         some deeper pressing reality
      Women and wine used to save me from confrontation
         but wine can kill me, as it did my mother
      and women; women find me less these days
         through the filters of age, affluence, and truth
      so we come down to it: mood slugging and slogging
         aerobics and smiles, sweat and hedonism
      balanced against karmic mirrors
         like Adelle, the psychedelic pharmacist
         and Kathi M., the Jewish-American business woman/wife
         and Maria, the waitress
         and Lorrie, the aerobics instructor
      I can offer no one anything and I go upset
         from each meeting where they tell me so.
                                 gallagher
                                 03 oct 83 – Orangetree

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —