neural pathways

snaking their way through flesh and pumping blood

like rivers in a field of red. 

continuing, then,

the thoughts must be fishes;

tiny minnows bumping and racing together, innumerable,

in an endless stream. 

some are lost in the mound and despite the

fisherman’s every efforts he can’t pluck

them out, or they slip through his fingers - 

if the pathways are the banks

then the commands of the brain

must be the water itself,

but sometimes these are jammed,

diverted, off to shallow little inlets

of dead water. 

if the thoughts are the fish

and the pathways the banks

and the commands the water

then the evil, uncanny thoughts that

cross all our brains must be

eels

slimy and slippery

but not like the eels of the world

for these eels shoot viscous ink and have no faces

and are invaders to the little rivers

and sometimes they choke the fish into silvery dust

or swallow them and corrupt them beyond recognition 

or spit them out again, so they go

swimming in the wrong direction 

entirely. 

(in this light

for the fisherman who fears

entrapping an eel instead of a minnow

it gives new meaning to the phrase 

“burn your bridges”

and sometimes

just sometimes

it is tempting to hurl one’s fishing rod in the river

or else snap it in two, and burn the pieces

to stop thinking entirely.)