Simulacra of the Soul

I wonder if there is in each of us the neurological 

equivalent of mille-feuille-layered photographic film – 
micron-thin – pervaded with the shades and shapes

of every human face we’ve peered at in the day

and dream of in the night, or in late afternoon, when

light begins to do its tricks and fix us with afflictions: 

addict us to new simulacra of the soul. I wonder 
if the brain hides whole the mass of implications 
in the vast arrays, soft panoplies of patient gazes, 

angry brows, erotic mouths, and other facial aspects 
and distractions we amass through looking – all 
unclassified and cooking in our humid psychic heat: 

spilling sweet into the deltas of our consciousness 
like dancing sea grass, waving in our optic estuaries: 
unconsidered beckonings of babies, dentists, prostitutes, 

professors, wrestlers, aunts. Today a troubled fellow 
billowed up and caught me in his glance – fully

loaded with surmise, pain and hunger in his eyes.

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