1 Taste (gustaoception)
When I was young, I learned to like a lot
The first thing I remember is the taste
Of cookies that my grandma often brought
Such memories will never be replaced
Like language that conveys the sense of sweet
Expressions, grandma’s cookies take the cake
Although the other things I’d sometimes eat
Attacked my tongue like some profound mistake
As I grew up, I learned at least to try
The things I never knew I might enjoy
And often I’d discover, by and by
My tongue was just a tool I could employ
To taste the treasures hidden in each meal
Or else, disgusting flavors to reveal.
2 Touch (tactioception)
3 Sight (opthalmoception)
4 Smell (olfacoception)
5 Hearing (audioceptiom)
6 Motion or kinesthesia (proprioception)
A Proprioceptive Metaphor
February 11, 2011
I will my legs to move; I want to run
But damn, they move too slow to call it that
They’re healing still; I know they’re almost done
My nerves are still unsure of where they’re at
Whenever I decide to move them fast
I guess for now I’ll have to move them slow
At first they wouldn’t move at all; at last
They move the way I want my legs to go
And yet, proprioceptors of my heart
Are deaf to how I feel; I want to love
Like learning how to run, I’ll have to start
With baby-steps; it’s you I’m thinking of
I’ll take it slow, but baby, I will mend
My heart and how it loves; I need my friend.
7 Balance (equilibrioception)
Feeling Like Me Again
December 24, 2010
Unbalanced, I can feel my mind get light
I sculpt myself surreal each time I wake
I hear the sound of chips, both wrong and right
And hope the hammered chisel will not break
If I should strike a diamond, it would be
Analogous to nothing but my heart
On either side my lungs could set me free
The diamond will not break, it holds my art
I only need to let my lungs reveal
the knowledge of the beauty they have felt
By breathing and by centering I’ll feel
myself the way I was before life dealt
a shitty hand by injuring my brain
I’ll feel my peace and calm; I won’t feel pain.
8 Acceleration (kinesthesioception)
9 Time (chronoception)
My Chronoception
October 6, 2011
My chronoception seems a little off
Eternity has come to be a time
At which I can no longer blithely scoff
Sweet steps to count in that sweet golden clime
It takes forever now to write a line
A simple line of poetry, like this
I wonder if there is some Grand Design
Or if I’ll ever feel Sunflower’s kiss
I know it’s just a fragment of my mind
The part that suffered injury last year
It’s not the way my life will be defined
It’s just a little inconvenient fear
Time keeps sixty minutes every hour
Let’s keep Time locked up within his tower.
10 Temperature (thermoception)
11 Pain (nociception)
12 Beauty (aesthetoception)
June 19, 2011
The greatest things I strive for must be real
Superlatives are only what I seek
All things I touch, or see, or hear, or feel
Must go beyond the simple words I speak
Let’s call the sum of heart and mind, my soul
It helps to set a universal stage
It doesn’t mean we have complete control
But lets us start upon a common page
I want the best, the greatest life to live
And thus, I think I know the path to choose
I need to find the gift that I would give
The gift that I would never want to lose
The gift called Beauty is the greatest great
It’s only Beauty that the gods create.