Our obsessions lodge 

in our brains where

sensory details hand off to 

neurons and synapses.

Are they really in charge?  

Are we really in charge?  

Is anything in charge?

Wired with morning coffee and sugar, 

body’s daily dose of hormones

and vitamins, 

we rush to our jobs, 

our obligations, 

our commitments—

the dotted line.  

Every day we try soothing 

our frayed emotions, 

our frayed husbands/wives, 

our frayed children, 

our dogs and cats.

Our hands in the air, 

our obsessions run through us

like hens with their heads cut off.

Sin—the thing we’ve blamed 

for eons— is no more to blame 

than the hatchet. 

Idea from “Fitz Patrick Boisseau,” Michelle Boisseau, A Sunday in God-Years: poems, 2009.