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.

 

Fardels bear

"We also deem those happy, who from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills and without descanting on their weight."

Juvenal, poet (circa 60-140 AD)
 

Innocent

She wept softly that she was innocent –

the shell of the barn still smoking

sizzling beams fireflying in the dusk –

the smoke blending in the near-darkness

stinging the eyes and the nostrils

keenly unseeing and unsmelling the body

at all costs – that she was innocent –

they had tied her hands to the oak –

anger mounting, the horses restless,

the women shivering in the chill –

judgement had to be passed quickly –

there was no way she could be innocent –

yet she pleaded, and looked harmless,

but she was uncannily beautiful –

many confessed to the blaze in their belly

which was everything but innocent –

that poor lad here had paid the price in full

for yielding to the lure of her beauty –

'twas best the barn had burnt – but innocent? –

they all knew her to be odd, and lusty –

she herself knew to be innocent – innocent –

cinders in her hair and on her hands a charred scent.

 

Within comfortable range

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum -- even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Noam Chomsky, linguistics professor and political activist (1928)
 

Beauty on canvas

The girl with the pearl

set the world a-whirl

to then the following year

be mowed down by the Reaper

 

Last one awake

Every evening

of every day

I have to be

the last one awake

Just to make sure

– everyone's safe

– none has to be

the last one awake

The first one up

to watch over

them all even

the last one to wake

The nights are short

but all worth it

there's joy to be

the last one awake

At times it hurts

to stay awake

but I'll always be

the last one awake

And if there be

once I shouldn't

then let me be

the last one to wake

 

Reality check

"I don't believe in playing down to children, either in life or in motion pictures. I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should. Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality."

Walt Disney, entrepreneur and animator (1901-1966)
 

Centripetal gyration

"I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I will try."

Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and novelist (1875-1926)
 

Watching a glacier move

"It was not conscious. There was no recognition in it of one's fortune, or fate, and for that very reason even to those dazed with watching for the last shivers of consciousness on the faces of the dying, consoling.

Forgetfulness in people might wound, their ingratitude corrode, but this voice, pouring endlessly, year in, year out, would take whatever it might be; this vow; this van; this life; this procession; would wrap them all about and carry them on, as in the rough stream of a glacier the ice holds a splinter of bone, a blue petal, some oak trees, and rolls them on."

Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

Drifting still

"Normal is the average of deviance."

Rita Mae Brown, writer (b. 1944)