Prozac
The uptake of serotonin in my skull
has been more or less successfully inhibited
now for so many years, I guess what I am is amazed
and amused, if not entirely relieved
in my chemical relief.
I mean, it’s funny that doctors refuse to hear talk
about a messed up human world.
These days it’s all about messed up chemicals
in our heads, I know; they won’t say that humans
are something ridiculous, they won’t say that life
is basically intolerable or that, for one reason or another,
we’ve created a world where millions
of even reasonably well-off, middle-class imperialists
cannot find a modicum of happiness.
Doctors prescribe happy pills.
That’s really the gist of it.
It’s freaking odd: no matter how flush
we happen to be, no matter how comfortable
our physical whatnot, happiness
is a struggle. Happiness
is a struggle. Happiness
must be pursued. It’s slippery.
About to appear. Close to succumbing
to our traps and seductions,
then not. Happiness, it seems, is fundamentally
reluctant. Happiness has a problem with us.
I saw a wild elephant once, on TV,
in the hands of a "trainer." It was a sight.
The thing so enraged—no, I mean outraged,
so obviously unable to believe
the preposterous thing that was happening, I tell you,
it broke my heart. I mean it was just so
present as itself, so real,
and even its, by our standards, ungainly
body was so kinetic, kinetic in a way I’d never seen,
having only seen
the broken ones. Well I guess what I’m saying is happiness
is like that. Happiness is actually mixed up and in cahoots
with rage, with refusal, even terror, perhaps, and
integrity. Who knew?
When we finally bring it around, by brute force relax it,
work it down into something
we can manage without even thinking, well,
I’m not sure it’s actually happiness
any more. For all their wisdom and money, their training and their luminous
intelligence, the best our experts can give us
iis a type of chronic sadness
which is not debilitating, which can be lived with.
Nichols © 2003
Posted for temporary viewing.