Every day you confront an assault on your senses.
You battle the noise and the lights.
The dirty air.
The cold and the hot.
The filth and the rot.
And the way the wind floods your lungs leaves you breathless.
Your temples will pound with the pressure put upon you.
Your mind will spin from the pain of bad memories.
And your heart will throb with the ache of lost moments.
Garbage Notes:
It’s another ridiculously hot day here for April and I’m going through my archive of poems, and this one stood out. I’m a sensitive person—I can’t handle sensory extremes. I’m bad when it’s hot, I’m useless when it’s freezing. I can’t take strong smells. Noise and bright lights, forget about it! I can’t even watch shit on Netflix if it has a strobing light warning. It’s awful.
This poem probably came out of one of countless harrowing experiences commuting through the concrete mess that is Manhattan—LIRR, subways—rivers and tributaries of human flesh, where everything smells. There’s piss and junk everywhere, and heinously loud sounds. Even when it’s cold you’ll still get random puffs of fuming hot air wafting toward you out of nowhere.
And I’m not just talking about external sensations here. In the last line of the poem about temples pounding, I’m referring to the internal pressures put upon us, by ourselves and our contemporaries. Stress. Stress. Always stress. And it takes a toll on the body, wreaks havoc on the system, and alters perception in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.
The last line I think is particularly poignant because our senses are so directly tied to memory, especially something like smell, or even hearing a song or something. It can trigger certain moments that may have long been held dormant.
It’s that sensory shock that, if you’re not careful, can lift you right out of the present moment and throw you off completely…
So I guess the message here is to be mindful of your environment and which forms of sensory assault you expose yourself to.
Franco Amati 2023
I loved the last line. Also this one:
rivers and tributaries of human flesh, where everything smells.
I absolutely LOVE this Franco!
and your commentary is a really special personal touch.
Hope you take the time to "cool off" in the ways you can on these un-seasonally warm days. Is there a body of water near you? Take a dip!