Ficstitious

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain, writer (18350 - 1910)

Insincerity is to genuineness what zirconium is to diamond

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."

George Orwell, writer (1903-1950)

. . .

Eyes follow dot-dot-dot
Tongue touch lip
Shaky pencil birth dinosaur

Intellectual eremiticism

"The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude."

Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

Intellect vs Senses

"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."

Susan Sontag, author and critic (1933-2004)

Skyscraper

 

I am the world disincarnate

no sound no taste

no sound

no taste

and my spirit rises from the molten tar

skin and bones slightly ajar

slithers past the turds of the dogs

the masses used to revere me as a god

haze among haze I brush past elbows

the space between people narrows

and I pass through the passers-by

and I hover shoulder-high

and I gaze in people's gaze

and the smouldering heat anaesthetises

them their blank stare akin to a tundra desert

inert, so inert

lighter than the air full of mosquitoes

I shell heads by the thousands

like a shower of torpedoes

yet with the net weight of inverted mountains

and I quasar in the glare of the sun

quasi-mirror to its reflection

I skim along the shard of lights which

shake me, shake me

Skyscraper

I remember a Mongol king whose eyes

pierced the distance like the falcon's

and he squinted when I blurred the horizon's line

and even then he doubted,

that I am as old as the sun

ghost, I am a ghost,

and they're the host,

glutting on the Fausts,

and their faults

and the skyscrapers like lances

and I like a harpoon of light

pierce in deadly dances

men's eyes kept in dreary human night

Mosquito Song (Queens of the Stone Age) acoustic cover

The milk of

"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945) 

Tenderness

she combed my hair flat with her fingers

maternal and caring

the shiver I felt at her touch lingers

natural and uncaring

vernal and unsparing

a fair, quiet girl – Oh I wish I were younger.

Test which most would fail

"The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities."

Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton), historian (1834-1902)