“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?