The quiet life

A pound of flesh is a pound of truth

the selfsame self in silence and fury

tied to freedom, unstoppable

funnelled by one's own choices.

Silence in solitude

fury in revels

silence in sleep

fury in destruction.

Dancing around ruins

unashamed and unconscious

– impressions on the mind

must be as red-hot irons –

zeitgeist margin in a satellite centre

going down as the world goes down

plummets like an asteroid

because it is bound to go down.

Chaos as the norm and the everyday

no fixed point but self-preservation

building up of one's own reality

no other voice inside but that which

exalts the brute

and feeds the drowsy rage

quieting what might have been a voice

– stifling conscience –

making sense of the inconsistencies

square will nonetheless fit into triangle

with justified ends and means

so as to sleep the sleep of the just.

Bound in fury and silence

unthinking each next step

but having prophetic dreams about it

in which truth is fleshed out –

but is silenced in the fury.

This, is her quiet life.