the brain and mind are not the same thing.

a brain floats, suspended,
down to the tips of my toes
and the blue rivers underneath my skin.

it is a box; simple tasks and quiet construction.

the mind has no such manuals.

it sees baboons in filtered skylights,
eyes as red as the blushing dawn,
gushing about over the hilltops of my shoulders.

it sees stop signs in the glass cracks
of my wooden closet door,
where the dark seeps around the green-light-go.

it sees fingertip to lip,
raccoons at rusty roadways,
Remus and Romulus locked in eternal combat;
preserved in the grains in the cherry tree trunk.

the brain is in the head,
but the mind is somewhere a little above;

hiding away in a doomsday bunker,
loud warnings burning the air,
bathed in cobwebs and blue lights.

away from people who haven’t quite learned,

that the brain and mind are not the same thing.