Because sarcasm doesn't convey in unspoken text

"I learn that ten percent of all the world's species are parasitic insects. It is hard to believe. What if you were an inventor, and you made ten percent of your inventions in such a way that they could only work by harnessing, disfiguring, or totally destroying the other ninety percent?"

Annie Dillard, author (b. 1945)

Cold shower

My friends here assembled tonight:

I propose a toast. A toast

to the thousandth life I haven't lived.

Another I couldn't possibly live

for it only exists in my mind, alas,

and will never come to pass.

I am sure each and every one of you present

has at one point dreamt of a better existence,

of a better prospect, of a better dream.

I am also sure that you have dreamt

for every or no reason at all,

just for the sake of dreaming a good dream,

even if it were just a five-minute daydream,

or to escape a sanity-shattering moment.

To be honest, a short daydream in the shower

is worth more to me than any of the dumb hours

I spend doing something I hate

or talking to people with whom I can't relate.

Today was my thousandth of these fantasies.

I won't tell you what happened but let's say

that apocalypse always had for me

more modelling power than the finest landscape.

More appeal to me had my own mindscapes

where I would lay the first stone to my empire,

defying all the laws we have here on earth.

Today made me realise

I am the Crowhurst of literature –

even if my death did serve

no other purpose

than to make me feel more alive –

accepting this as my very nature.

Nothing I wrote will ever be put in quote,

yet it's all good, all good, for once I stood

on a pulpit and received a Nobel gloat,

which made me stop knocking on wood.

Now my dear friends, whose realness

must be questioned against facts,

regard daydream as dismissing with tact

all that smarts and defines and brings,

for one can bear too much of real things.

So I am left with the one stunt to do today:

go take a shower and put the water so hot

that my skin will flake and peel and clot

and in the most painful way will pass away

ridiculously curled up at the bottom of the tub.

And good luck to the one who will have to scrub.

Last daydream of mine, but the only one

which will obey enough laws of physics,

social determinism and thermodynamics

to be able to come to be a home run.

Eventually, though beaten

and exiled and spurned,

do what you will to quieten,

reality always has the last word.

Toast!

 

Obviously not so obvious

"Evidence is the only good reason to believe anything."

Richard Dawkins, biologist and author (b. 1941)

The Coincidence Squad

We are the Coincidence Squad.

Contrary to what you may think, we do not roam aimlessly – for we have an agenda.

We find whom we seek, and act according to the plan.

We are masters of – and mastered by – serendipity.

When you suddenly realise that you are not the only one to wear that particular shade of mauve like your heart on your sleeve, you know we have been hard at work.

When you notice a recurring word, expression, oddity, we have been there to nudge you into realisation.

Whether there be epiphany or not is not up to us.

We billboard your life with unmistakeable signs,and these need to be interpreted.

We multiply the semes – in our jargon we say that we shift the occurrences of incidences to the red – for we believe that the oftener you are lead to see, the likelier you will see.

Serendipity is a spring of coincidences with an aim to open. Your eyes to see, your heart to feel, your mouth to laugh.

We officiate when your back is turned so as you do not suspect anything else at work but randomness.

We operate at night when no light can be shed on our activities, yet we are the eye-openers of the quotidian.

We know that our work breaches the very fabric of the world you live in. It allows you to see the strings and levers, the pulleys and the gears.

You may even think that the world revolves around you.

That the concatenation of events is an unbroken chain leading to you being you.

That a higher instance factualises your presence on Earth.

Consternated as you may be that it might not be so we in the Coincidence Squad work hard to making you think you can see what you believe to be the sign.

We vindicate you into your existence. We validate the connection between the dots which draw the general design.

We legitimise fights, thoughts, beliefs, actions. In more ways than one we are the engine, the fuel and the natural laws which bind and govern.

We make things happen when things can happen. Nothing has to happen, but anything can – and we are here to make sure it does.

We barge in the aporia, we storm in the hiatus – that door left ajar – we make things stand side by side and without pausing to step back to take a look at our marvels we press on, for some of you like to pay attention to the details – indeed for some, details are all that matter – and we would hate to disappoint.

After all, whether the signs be interpreted or not does not ultimately befall us, or matter to us – after all, all things are relative to one another and to the observer – for we shall continue mirroring, juxtaposing, abutting, against every single one of the odds.

For we are the Coincidence Squad.

 

A minute ago

A minute ago, everything was fine.

Right as rain, as folk would chime.

Not particularly unlucky,

not necessarily successful,

yet I was as fine as can be.

A minute ago, I was whole.

Fit as the proverbial fiddle.

Taken for granted by my family,

I was the beacon they followed,

I was still fine as can be.

A minute ago, I was myself.

My life lined up on the shelf.

I just learn that I have cancer.

I should feel like I'm in hell,

I should be looking for an answer.

But a minute ago, I was inert.

Now I'm a wrecking ball let

loose down the hill

– no engine, no purpose, no driver –

for there is neither good nor ill.

 
 

The Raid

The dogs, restless, barking

and gnawing at the ropes,

egged on by the smells of burnt flesh,

lapping at rivulets of fresh blood.

And crows, crows, crows everywhere

blackening the lowered skies

impatient for the feast

cawing at the resting men.

The blades of grass briefly bent

expectant of rain, and wind,

oblivious already, uncaring,

rising to the men arising.

Songs of fell deeds hummed

knelt down on the riverbank

the swords, cleaned and whetted,

ready for the next raid.

Tardago

Is it going to beg a colourful each moon?

Absolutely maybe, I read in the flight of the pelican –

they drink the blood of their young, I heard,

or the reverse in blue, or shades of blue.

Nowhere did it say you were half bat-shit crazy,

cunningly concealing your full-blown tardago

as you hovertrembled over cobblestones

like velum in the sleekthroat of the wind:

the vibrato of the last lines of Lord Jim,

pelican-like pelicans schmaltzing around

in the smokeguise of a snaking river.

Not once did you subtlemention your obsessions,

the stripes of coal-blue black tarcoal of your soul,

and you hopscotched till your shins hurt

and your mouth utterly wordparched.

Carbon-dated humour plastered on the wall of a cave

deepdown in the Larzac region of your heart,

that's what the mindspelunkers found

studied, edited, reported and archived,

patting their back and elbowing their sides,

unwondering what the use of the whole shebang was.

Yet the new moon came and your tardago with it!

The slyfooted auguries were caught unawares,

their nose too often skywards bent

while it should have haruspicised the omen.

You of all people know how to screenfathom,

how the tardago firesparks one into being –

you have been there. But you came back insane,

unfitted for shopwork or human relationships,

blind among the feathered, leading the pelicans

where they should have waitperched all along.

The new moon waned, and you and your tardago

went with it, thank god, never to be unseen again.

I am left herenow to lick my wounds and uncringing

slowly decipher murals in the candledark.

The Dancer

She dances, oh she dances

she tiptoes away in echoes

Her blue cotton dress is

a murmuration of sparrows

she darts and she flits and she comes

She forgets where she chances from

But not a glance, not a glance

In her ears ring sweet folk songs

so she dances and in her dance

swallows and waves in throngs

like tumbling pebbles on the shore

crashing and crushing and drowning

the shells, the music, the troubadour

Her quick legs flash like arrows

lance the wind like thunder

She whirls and swirls and she sees

the quiff lip of the cliff ahead

where every step stops to tread

And in one, two, quick embraces

kisses the ground she just left

And dances, oh, she dances.

Monster

I am the opposite of a monster:

I do not show myself to anyone.

I stay in the dark of my den,

I watch, I stalk, I conquer.

I do what everyone dreams of.

I listen and observe and wait:

I am early when others are late.

I do not hate, I can only love.

I am not what you think I am:

for I prefer the comfort of obscurity

to the dangers found in the city,

with its scoundrels, its thieves, its shams.

The art I practise you never discuss,

for you refuse to acknowledge.

Yet you can’t say that I make a fuss:

I’d rather remain at the light’s edge.

In the black of the streets,

my artifices open the minds:

I am the one-eyed leading the blind,

awake where everyone sleeps.

I am not the monster you think of:

I run deeper than your deepest thought,

what I do I do it for love:

I am that which you once fought.

I am in the hiatus, at the edge of sight,

only to be seen peeking between the slats.

Exiled by day and obscene at night:

navel of the world living among the rats.
 

The line in the sand

The line in the sand

I had to draw

was like the thin shadow

on the ridge of the dunes

when the sun starts mowing down

the world around

when the darkness looms

the line in the sand

I should have drawn sooner

was like the sleepless

possibility of chaos

of living on a fault line

the line in the sand

spiral poor and mean

sour and lean line drawn

with a flotsam stick

splitting the drowned

from the quick

that line in the sand

for us signalled

a mine in the sand

that would explode

and slay us both

the line in the sand

freshly-dug furrow in constant shadow

flanking dunes made by the hoe

like a toothless gum in a parchèd mouth

the greatest divide in that land

in which everything has gone south

so I drew a line in the sand

and we kept on either side of it

enamoured adversaries

who could and couldn't stand

on the one side of the pit

because someone buries

because someone had to quit

because someone must be banned

that damned line in the sand

estranged us, strangled us

for you it was a curse

because you didn't doubt

for me it was the ticket out

of that bloody wasteland

So I left behind the line in the sand

still drawn on that strand

marched on down the road

by walking away from you

my heart heavy and my head bowed

but with the steady stride

of someone who has gone through,

who knows it was the right thing to do.