Unprotected Vision

Naively I peered beneath the lovely thin veneer of bullshit with my naked eyes

Destroyed both my retinas having neither proper guidance nor protection

Took it straight into my brain for reasons that I could not explain

While you stayed safely in the shadows and always asked me why

Ingested the potent images which harmed my inner workings

Stared straight at the radioactive glow emanating from the blistering center

Remained unaware for years of the accumulating damage

the pure whites of my eyes grew yellow and their clear lenses fogged

Gazed fixedly at things you had the commonsense to just ignore

Blinded for long periods by the searing after-images

Stumbled about as my eyes readjusted and you thought me drunk

I never understood the hazards of my unprotected vision

Could not stand the thick dark blinders which might have saved my sight

Dismissed as cowardly those who did not peer as deeply into the flames

Scorched my rods and burnt my cones until dark and light were just the same

Shorted out my optic nerve on impulses that others painlessly avoided

My visual cortex smoked and melted down from the overly-bright, chaotic flashing

Processed too many inputs that normal folks had the sense to turn aside

Stared long at harmful emissions from which they quickly looked away

Felt the grotesque images they never saw become part of my nightly dreams

Was driven by my visions into a rant that was incomprehensible to others

Finally tried to look away, but by then it was far to late to matter

At last I could no longer see even in the good light of simple daytime

Then, I illuminated everything with the rays that had made me mostly blind

Crawled off into the depths but could not be soothed, even by the empty darkness

Took to cursing your protective lenses which were broken when I got them

Stumbled more as I grew older and my sight narrowed to tiny points

Seared in vain, my eyes could not share the visions that supported you

Unprotected gazing made me blind but what I had seen would not then sustain me