So here’s the last of my Dostoevsky cool quotes for now, this time from the fantastic The Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Despite being quite dark and moody I feel like my poems came out a little more on the positive side – perhaps a reflection on how I was feeling when I wrote the poems compared with when I was inspired by the quotes as I was reading the story.
Acknowledgement to Husker Du and Rob Crow/Heavy Vegetable for some relevant phrases and ideas and, as before, the poems borrow heavily from the text.
Searching for a picture for this post also lead me to finding this hand painted animation of the story.
Ah, it’s so hard to be the only one to know the truth! But they won’t understand it. No, they won’t.
No Truth
Only I know the truth
They sure won’t understand
I carry this burden
It is just as I planned
Truth is in the saying
The truth will set you free
But I will never share
The truth is just for me
Maybe it was the result of the conviction that dawned upon me quite independently of my will that nothing made any difference in this world.
Conviction
I tried and tried and tried and tried
To make a difference before I died
Close to the end a sudden dawning
Independently and without warning
Your time is pointless, meaning, none
A pinprick in millions more to come
So make the best and start believing
Despite the sentence we’re all receiving
…eternally dear to the hearts of her most ungrateful children.
Realm
This earthly realm
Where it all starts
Never ending, eternally
Dear to the hearts
….of her most ungrateful children
We can truly love only with suffering and through suffering. We don’t know how to love otherwise; we don’t know any other love. I want to suffer so that I may love.
Love and Suffering
I wanted it all, wanted it so badly
Staring out of misted windows like a fool
To love this love is to suffer it gladly
Our twisted hearts make us look so cruel
This love, true love, it knows no other way
Crushed and broken hearts not spoken thereof
Life lived without it, not for another day
I must, I want to suffer so that I may love
My hatred for the people of our earth had always contained a feeling of despair – why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?
World of Masochism
My hatred for the people of our earth
Has always contained a feeling of despair
Why couldn’t I hate them without loving them?
Why did I have to care?
Some days I’m just in KEN Mode
A rage of pure hate and seething
Other days I wish for utopia
A paradise full of our dreaming
Which way will it go today?
Which side of the bed did I wake?
Every thought is masochism
No matter which path I take
They grew to appreciate the beauty of untruth…the germ of the lie penetrated their hearts, and they took a fancy to it.
A Good Lie
Sometimes a lie is like a lover
A beauty to be believed
The untruth penetrates the heart
Willingly deceived
…they experienced suffering, and came to love it; they declared that suffering was the only way to Truth. Then science spread among them.
To Suffer
He felt he’d suffered enough
So the Buddhist jumped from the roof
Science says ‘he’s dead’
He thought it the way to truth
Each became so jealous of his individuality that he had to do his best to belittle and humble the individuality of others….
Tall Poppy
You’ve reached the greatest height
Like it’s some crowning achievement
Society brings you down to earth
Where everyone is in agreement
Voluntary slavery in which the weak submitted to the strong of their own free will, if only in order to gain their support to oppress those who were even weaker than themselves.
Shit Trickles Down
Submit to the strong by your own free will
Eat the shit until you’ve had your fill
So you may enslave those below you
Pass on the shit your master throws you
The human centipede, a fitting analogy
A voluntary agreement to this economy
A vicious circle made of 7 billion pieces
The pyramid scheme of human faeces
We’re striving for the same things; we’re all, from the sage to the worst criminal, making our way toward the same objective. Only we’re trying to get there by different roads.
Different Roads
You take the high, I’ll take the low
It’s the same whichever way you go
You take the low, I’ll take the high
Arriving together, just in time to die
Let’s say paradise will never come about! I know myself it won’t – yet I’ll still go on preaching.
Right Turn
Never stop believing
Counter negative traits
Never stop the search
Paradise awaits
It will never come
In your lifetime’s fight
You know what is right
Be doing what is right
Afterword:
Man’s desires are not reasonable and often make him act against his own interest and common sense, but they are what makes him human.
Contradictions
I am respectable, yet not reasonable
My flaws are the things that make me
My desires maybe contradictions
This human interest will not break me
Gratitude Journal
I am so happy and grateful for the daily struggle of thinking of something to write here, without repeating myself. During the day something will pop into my mind to write but when I sit down to do it I struggle to remember. As days are somewhat repetitive at the moment I keep coming up with the same ideas. So anyway, I am grateful that I have this first-world problem.
1994ever 