Neurological Puppetry

Each morning I watch my hand reach

for coffee, as if I’m the one who asked it to.

My cerebellum plays puppeteer,

yanking calcium channels like rigging,

while I—whatever I is—

watch from somewhere behind my eyes.

Scientists say free will

is just a story we tell ourselves

while dopamine pulls our strings.

But then, who’s telling the story?

Who’s watching the show?

Some say there’s a higher hand

above the skull-stage,

divine fingers threading down

through the cosmos, past satellites,

past weather balloons, past

our need to say

"up is where God lives"—

as if heaven could be mapped

by astronauts, as if transcendence

obeyed gravity’s rules.

But here’s the thing about puppets:

they don’t wonder who’s

moving their joints,

don’t write poems

about being puppets.

They don’t feel their strings

and call it consciousness.

They don’t trace them upward,

searching for meaning

in all that empty space

between synapses and stars.