Fireblossom Friday : "The Distorted Lens"

Bertha Mason, the madwoman in the attic in "Jane Eyre."

Hello, poets. Fireblossom here with another Fireblossom Friday writing challenge for you. This time we're going to put our faces right up to the eyepiece and look at things through a distorted lens.

What happens if we can't trust our senses, or our mind's ability to interpret what they convey? Sometimes an illness or a brain injury can result in some very peculiar states of mind. Oliver Sacks reports about a man who believed that everyone in his life was an exact--yet false--duplicate of the people they pretended to be. It turned out that the pathways in his brain that connected facial recognition with emotional response had been compromised. As a result, this man saw faces he knew, but did not feel anything about them and so concluded that they had to be fakes.  

A stroke victim may lose "right" or "left" altogether, depending upon which side of the brain has been damaged. In her book "Left Neglected", Lisa Genova--author of "Still Alice"--writes about a (fictional) woman who has completely lost the notion of "left." Half the world ceases to exist for her.  

Mental illness can also certainly distort a person's understanding of the world around them. Such conditions as depression, paranoia, schizophrenia and dementia, not to mention alcoholism and drug addiction, can turn the world into a dark or absurd landscape.

So, your task is to write from the point of view of someone who is seeing reality through a distorted lens.  New poems only. No haiku because I have a deathly fear of Oriental forms. Enjoy.