Prisoner of Consciousness

I am a prisoner of consciousness. I think too much. I think myself into a shame-filled bubble of remorse and self-loathing.

I am a prisoner of consciousness. I am too self-aware, all too painfully self-aware. If ignorance is bliss, then awareness is a prison. It's a prison of my own making, and so far I can loose the latch to my gate only when I'm on some alcohol bender. And even that's not a guarantee that I'll be free if only for a minute.

I am a prisoner of consciousness. The rub is that it's a prison of my own making, and in truth I made nothing. I am a prisoner on the envelope of neuronal activity. I'm cresting a wave of brain electricity, but it's persistent stormy cloud of neuronal awareness that is particular to my situation.

I am a prisoner of consciousness. I fight demons that are already impaled on my knife's point. You can't wound a wound. You can't cut a cut. You can remove the life from something that never existed.

I'm a prisoner of consciousness. It's a grammatical prison. It begins with the frame--prisoner. It situates this in an activity--thinking. And it seals the deal with the subjective affirmation--I am.

I am not a prisoner of consciousness, and I know why the caged bird sings. The mind is a prison. The thinking substance cannot transcend the thing which it is. The prison is just one manifestation of the thinking substance coming into self awareness. Self-awareness is the prison, the condition for self-discipline. It's time to go back to counting tiles, anything to take my mind of my situation.