Poetry War – Visual Craziness

A few years ago

I visited my optometrist because I thought I was going crazy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you thought I was already crazy, I get it.

However, this time I thought I was crazy…. big step into the craziness bin.

So, where was I…

Oh yes, I thought I was going crazy.

You might wonder why, after all these years, this was the first time the crazy idea popped into my head. Well, it was because I was suddenly seeing strobing flashes with my eyes open and swirling colors with them closed. It was incredibly distracting and the idea of aliens taking over my brain and thought patterns did pass through my head. Since it seemed they were making their entry through my eyes I decided to see my optometrist first.

I made the call and she wanted me to drop everything and get right over to her office. Apparently she wanted to catch them on the way in. So, away I went. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate on driving when strobe lights are going off in your eyes?

I arrived at her office and staggered my way through the door. About half way there I had discovered that if I closed my right eye the strobes stopped and I was left with only the swirls – which were easier to deal with but made me dizzy.

She didn’t want the aliens contaminating the rest of her patients so took me right in for a look and discovered that the aliens had found me too touch to tangle with and already vacated, but had damaged the back of my eyeball in the process.

I don’t know if you have any knowledge of how an eyeball works, but the way she described it we have like a projection screen at the back of our eye. The view of the outside world is focused through the front of our eyes then projected on the back screen upside down. Our brain then processes the image and reverses it so we don’t think we’re walking on the ceiling. Unfortunately, my projection screen was torn and a piece of it was flapping in the breeze inside my eye. That was causing the strobe effect when my eye was open and the swirling effect when my eye was closed. This went on for a few days until everything stabilized and my sight was back to more or less normal.

A few months later I had spiraling light going on in the same eye, which resulted in another trip to her office. I guess the aliens had tried again because a second, smaller, piece was torn and moving back and forth. This time the light show only lasted about 30 hours before my sight went back to normal.

Leap forward in time about 6 years.

I started to see large black invisible insects. They would crawl across my bed at night. Sometimes they would fly past me in broad daylight. Then I started seeing a gray film across my eyes when the light was just right. Finally, I booked another eye appointment.

Have you noticed that every time you see your eye specialist he/she has more equipment? Sometimes it’s a puffer thingy that blows in your eye and makes you feel like your eye is full of sand; sometimes it’s a screen that you watch and press a button when you see a flash of light. This time it was a camera that flashed light in my eye and took photos of the inside.

So, what did it find?

Well, it found that both of my eyes are a whole lot older than the rest of me…with the possible exception of my lower back. There are pieces of the back projection screen floating around all over the inside of my eye. Some of them are large and relatively stationary. These are the ones that look like roaches running across the cover of my bed as I read a book or watch TV. The gray one that shows up as a blur directly in front of me in certain lights is a cataract. This particular cataract is inside the lens of my eye. According to the doctor I will probably need surgery to replace the lens in a few years.

Hmmmm….I don’t know how you feel about such things, but I have a problem with being cut on….especially in my eye.

The whole thing has created something of a delema.

So, here’s my poem…

What Do I See?

What do I see when I look around?
Do I really see, or hear the sound?

Why can’t it be that I clearly see
All the things surrounding me?

An insect crawls across my bed –
is it real, or in my head?

My eyes tell lies about all things,
does it crawl or has it wings?

I just can’t trust my vision now!
Is that a cat, or far off cow?

I try to put my thread in line
with needle and of course I find

the needle isn’t where I thought;
the thread is in my best blind spot.

So now the question does arize,
“Should I have surgery on my eyes?”

With those thoughts I start to quaver,
my conviction starts to waver.

So, here on Indecision’s Peak
I stand – the view is pretty bleak.