Neurobiology Of Love
Winning Entry by Madkins
Neurobiology of Love
Do not suggest that one cannot feel the longing
For another individual.
Do not imply that neurons simply navigate and transmit
signals to modestly control our ability to move, breathe, see, think.
Do not offer me that rash rhetoric of equivocation
Defending the notion that love is not ingrained in the very depths of our being.
No. The winding, twisting, interlacing tubes of intensity
Trap the very core of what it is to love.
Inside is like a spring, crystalline pool heated by the tender rays of sun.
Coiling all around and leaving no area unmarked.
The intensity runs boundless like water plummeting south
Against a creased face of a mountain edge.
Nerves, carving out their path, staining all around
Without hesitation chooses for you.
No democracy in sight but a struggle for power that you will surely lose.
No choice in who, nor when, nor how long, nor how much, nor how little.
Relinquish all thoughts of conscious control and leave
It to the dictator.
So phenomenal it is to love.
So phenomenal it is to be loved.
Yet, how preternatural it is when the desired equilibrium is not present.
When red, bloody flesh is torn away, revealing those woven tubes. You see.
There it is.
Trapped.
Harassing your every moment of clarity.
Screaming at you.
Forcing you to listen.
Usurping your composure.
It stabs.
Stabs you with jolts of intense burning.
Stabs you with piercing sensations.
Stabs you with eventual numbness.
The pain clings to you tenaciously like poison ivy.
Its grip tighter and tighter.
Love is mellifluous music on repeat.
Love is a somnambulist in which you never escape.
Love is beyond limerence.
Love is lachesism.
Love is ethereal, almost ineffable.
How does love provoke such a plethora of endless definitions?
None right. None wrong.
And still. Why is humanity bound in an endless stream, condemned to follow
The stains and paths set out for us by those interlacing tubes?
Because, to put it plainly, that’s what it is to be human.
So, be scared; be terrified, if those nerves merely control your ability to move, breathe, see, and think.
Do not suggest that one cannot feel the longing
For another individual.
Do not imply that neurons simply navigate and transmit
signals to modestly control our ability to move, breathe, see, think.
Do not offer me that rash rhetoric of equivocation
Defending the notion that love is not ingrained in the very depths of our being.
No. The winding, twisting, interlacing tubes of intensity
Trap the very core of what it is to love.
Inside is like a spring, crystalline pool heated by the tender rays of sun.
Coiling all around and leaving no area unmarked.
The intensity runs boundless like water plummeting south
Against a creased face of a mountain edge.
Nerves, carving out their path, staining all around
Without hesitation chooses for you.
No democracy in sight but a struggle for power that you will surely lose.
No choice in who, nor when, nor how long, nor how much, nor how little.
Relinquish all thoughts of conscious control and leave
It to the dictator.
So phenomenal it is to love.
So phenomenal it is to be loved.
Yet, how preternatural it is when the desired equilibrium is not present.
When red, bloody flesh is torn away, revealing those woven tubes. You see.
There it is.
Trapped.
Harassing your every moment of clarity.
Screaming at you.
Forcing you to listen.
Usurping your composure.
It stabs.
Stabs you with jolts of intense burning.
Stabs you with piercing sensations.
Stabs you with eventual numbness.
The pain clings to you tenaciously like poison ivy.
Its grip tighter and tighter.
Love is mellifluous music on repeat.
Love is a somnambulist in which you never escape.
Love is beyond limerence.
Love is lachesism.
Love is ethereal, almost ineffable.
How does love provoke such a plethora of endless definitions?
None right. None wrong.
And still. Why is humanity bound in an endless stream, condemned to follow
The stains and paths set out for us by those interlacing tubes?
Because, to put it plainly, that’s what it is to be human.
So, be scared; be terrified, if those nerves merely control your ability to move, breathe, see, and think.
Featured Entry by Octopoda
Neurobiology of Love
I want to wade back into the moment
Paddle up to my knees in the feeling
of contentment
Experience the sensation in waves
lapping at my body
Close my eyes
Lift my face
to the sun that shines in celebration
I remember why
You were happy
And so
it follows
was I
I want to wade back into the moment
Paddle up to my knees in the feeling
of contentment
Experience the sensation in waves
lapping at my body
Close my eyes
Lift my face
to the sun that shines in celebration
I remember why
You were happy
And so
it follows
was I
Featured Entry by quietmandave
Could you trace the path of that pulse in your heart
in your brain that makes you fall in love
as we track muons and beta particles in cloud chambers
their trails fizz with energy, passion,
desire
seek attraction as close to magnetism as the human body allows.
Or is this matter and antimatter, elusive and evasive
opposites attract with power to destroy each other,
like love, the effect is too complex to understand
yet theory tells us that it must, beyond doubt, exist.
Will we ever understand? Will we be able to reduce
love
to a number of pathways, in the same way
that science mapped the human genome,
to say to ourselves, there is so little difference
between how animals and humans feel love.
in your brain that makes you fall in love
as we track muons and beta particles in cloud chambers
their trails fizz with energy, passion,
desire
seek attraction as close to magnetism as the human body allows.
Or is this matter and antimatter, elusive and evasive
opposites attract with power to destroy each other,
like love, the effect is too complex to understand
yet theory tells us that it must, beyond doubt, exist.
Will we ever understand? Will we be able to reduce
love
to a number of pathways, in the same way
that science mapped the human genome,
to say to ourselves, there is so little difference
between how animals and humans feel love.
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