Mind?

Mind?

is the mind
anything more
than the storyteller
for our 
instincts
and temperaments?

the mind
retaining
and
formulating 
fairy tales
fables
and nursery rhymes
passed on to me
and to you
explaining away
what i am
why i do 
what i do
and why i've done
what i've done

when
in fact
what we are
what we've done
is mostly
the expression and outcome
of base instinct
guided by temperament
a wandering toddler
with wants
needs 
lusts
yet
a social being too
in need of temperance
for survival
in civil society

the toddler
otherwise
driven by urges
needing
a consistent
story
of what the toddler is
the guiding hand
of a parent
to lend coherence
for the reasons
for its feelings
and actions
the guiding hand
of a parent
to keep us
from wandering
over too many
craggy cliffs
and into forests
hiding
too many 
clawed and toothed
voracious beasts

but your reason
your rationale
your mind
and mine
supplying
different narratives
different accounts
for how and why
to avoid
what you see as perilous
and i
do not

different narratives
reasons
explanations
for categorizing
each of us 
and our behaviors
differently
one as foolhardy and reckless
the other as
prudent and wise
strangely enough
each character and category
as necessary
to our milieu
as pluses
and minuses
to mathematics

necessarily
fallible reason
and apperceptions
birthing different explanations
for the same actions
and inactions
different narratives  
of what is brave and just
cowardly and unjust
gorgeous and hideous
all the different
characterizations
and categories
of the same actions
the same people
the same things
sorta like
in that movie
rashomon

different
narratives
flowing from the same set of figures
the different
mathematical formulations
derived from our different temperaments
the miscalculations
messing things up
but making things
more colorful
adding depth
and perspectives
at least
cognition's
convenient distractions
perhaps
from the brutal starkness
of 
birth
survival
procreation
more survival
then death

so what's left
to do
but curse
the mind
for keeping us
believing in fairy tales?
or exalt it
for allowing us
to continue
to believe
in something so wrong
yet
so satisfying
and fantastic
perhaps even necessary
as the tales
of aesop
mother goose
and the brothers
grimm?

for
just as we need
both daredevils
and the cautious
perhaps
we need
the temperaments
and instincts
of both believers
and non-believers
in fairy tales
and fables

and all this shit
that exists
between the secular
and divine
reason and emotion
truth and falsity
the past, present and future
are as similar and different
as necessary and fundamental
as 
water and air
composed of much
of the same
goddamned 
shit

so here we are
the perverse
little plaything
of cognition
with
consciousness
friskily confusing
and distracting
with all its colors
depths
and perspectives
protecting us
from the cruelty
of what little
there is
to know
protecting and comforting
with all the fairy tales
fables
and other make-believes
we construct
for and about
ourselves