Turning Migraines into Insight

In the past few years, I've experienced something called cluster migraines, unlike headaches I've ever known before. They're pretty awful things that feel like a storm gathering in my head, can last for days at a time and are accompanied by acute nausea.

Who knows where these beasts come from or where they go to... I do know that when they strike I need to minimize screen time (for example, I'm shutting my eyes to type every other sentence, here).

To make the most of this unpleasant situation, I've tried to mine it for art and use it as a peephole through which to view the world, as I have done in this poem:

What the Migraine Said

As I lie, here, half in and out of consciousness
I imagine my migraine as a world migraine
my cluster headache as a cluster of world aches
that we must tip toe around like a sleeping tiger

The sleep of reason produces monsters—
this we know from art and the news:
murder and sham leaders shooting themselves
in one foot and chewing on the other.

But, the sleep of reason produces angels, also
like Love, which is no whimsical thing,
a love like bull, bullfighter and bloody cape,
billowing in the wind, like an open heart

Beckett said this best, truth in paradox:
The mystics I like…their burning illogicality
–the flame…Which consumes all our filthy logic…
Where there are demons there is something precious

Once we know this, the rest is silence.
The master is not permitted
the same mistakes of a novice.

yahia lababidi