Month: February 2022

Dust – 28th February 2022

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‘I am a piece of fallen skin’
‘I am a broken hair from a spider’s leg’
‘I am from dirt the cat tramped in’
We three wait
In a corner close to the walls
Behind and beside the washing machine
We see the day come and go
And we wait
Ants wander by often, lizards, sometimes, too
The cat peers under the machine
About once a week
And we wait
One day the machine is gone
And all traces of worldly humans
Soon the plaster and brick will crumble
And we wait
We see the weeds encroaching
Pushing through every crack
The wind will never find us here
And the heat and cold bother us not
And we wait
Now there is only darkness
Every living thing has disappeared
We float away in space
Waiting for a reformation

The most important skill of a species intelligent enough to understand both their insignificance and their mortality is the capability for distraction.

Tim Urban

The Week That Was – 1st April 1979

A Meta Verse – 27th February 2022

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Would you volunteer for a fatal addiction
To an electrical pleasure, brain implant
The sum of all pleasure, constant highs
A simple flick of the switch would grant?
Would you sacrifice your suffering
The demons and devils of your daily fight
The needles that give you balance
Just to die tomorrow in orgasmic delight?

We own our own minds – and together, we can take them back from the forces that are stealing them.

Johann Hari

The Scarecrow – 26th February 2022

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The crows are building
Nests under my hat
I’ve thought long and hard
About this
And I’m no longer scared
To be alone

Based on the titular Khalil Gibran parable. I found almost every one of his parables poetically inspiring. More coming, I’m sure!

…a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life…the tiny improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable privilege of contemplating the universe in our poetry…

Maria Popova, paraphrasing Alan Lightman

Where Go You, My Friend? – 25th February 2022

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I am not what I seem
I have masks to protect you from me
I stay alone in my house
And it will this way forever be
I am simply understood
Because I am a mirror in my ways
Yet you should not trust my deeds
Or my thoughts that reflect your plays
I hide from you my darkness
My skies of purple shadow
As you ascend yourself to Heaven
It’s down to Hell that I go
Your steps are taken with caution
Whilst my madness removes my care
There’s direction to your movement
But I feel it’s not going anywhere
My friend, you are not my friend
But how shall I make you understand?
My path is not your path
Yet together we walk hand in hand

Inspired by a Khalil Gibran parable, with the last four lines lifted word for word. I found this short parable very affecting and particularly relevant to my thoughts on friendship.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Choose Your Hurt – 24th February 2022

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Do you believe you are hurt?
Did your mother rush to your side?
Pause, just for a moment
Just enough time to decide
A scraped knee from a bike fall
Or spiteful words screamed in hate
The response is always a choice
Is it a pain you can bear to take?
The bleeding body is real
But other situations require more thought
Are you just responding this way
Because that is all you were taught?

In my heart I laugh at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.

Khalil Gibran, Me Friend

The Stolen Masks – 19th February 2022

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I cursed the thieves the night my masks were stolen
Yet I found the freedom of loneliness a blessing
Now I was safe from ever being understood
Those who would enslave, now forever guessing
And so I became a madman as I let go my masks
When the sun kissed my face, I found my belief
*But let me not be too proud of my safety
Even a thief in a jail is safe from another thief

*Inspired and pilfered from Khalil Gibran’s parable ‘The Madman’

You cannot define a person on just one thing. You can’t just forget all these wonderful and good things that a person has done because one thing didn’t come off the way you thought it should come off.

Aretha Franklin