A loose shard of thought
Flips and twists about in
My brain,
Poking sensitive tissue,
And sending firestorms
Riffling through my circuitry.
I can't really say I feel each
Prickle or pierce, but they
Do make me wince, sometimes.
I found bliss.
And cooked it on the
simmer setting
of my soul --
That vacant hole that
I let swell with color
and light.
My only worry was that
it would flash fry all
that I am.
But one worry is enough
to kill the joy,
to kill everything vibrant
& reckless within.
The bliss was quenched,
and it steamed & sizzled,
and all I could hear was its
deafening sound.
A narrow Fellow in the Grass
Occasionally rides --
You may have met him? Did you not
His notice instant is --
The Grass divides as with a Comb,
A spotted Shaft is seen,
And then it closes at your Feet
And opens further on --
He likes a Boggy Acre --
A Floor too cool for Corn --
But when a Boy and Barefoot
I more than once at Noon
Have passed I thought a Whip Lash
Unbraiding in the Sun
When stooping to secure it
It wrinkled And was gone --
Several of Nature's People
I know, and they know me
I feel for them a transport
Of Cordiality
But never met this Fellow
Attended or alone
Without at tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.
the lion looks cross,
but, perhaps, it’s just a mask.
who knows the lion’s mind?
The need to break free of the program -- e.g. to be master of fear & anger, not slave to them.
What positive emotion do you feel most often?
Contentment: the most sustainable of feelings.
Of all the masters & all the slaves,
I find that mind fire burns in waves.
And sometimes the emotions derail
too quickly to lengthen the exhale.
Trees falling in the forest, unheard,
can still crush a nest of baby birds.
Turns out it's not the sound that matters,
but what the destruction leaves in tatters.
The phrase “Queen of Slaves” comes from a Percy Bysshe Shelley poem (Canto 4, No. 24)
the pond 's drying up. the fish look sad, and I feel sad.
Scarecrow, n. - that which exists
solely to evoke fear.
There are so many scarecrows:
global - the end of the world
as we know it.
societal - the end of the tribe
as we know it.
individual - scarecrows of the soul.
Scarecrows lead us into the worst
versions of ourselves:
The one who's stressed, and mean
because of it.
The one who imagines conspiracy
around every corner.
The one who sees threat in every
change & in every difference.
The one who wants an orderly world
of people just like themselves -
familiar, cozy, and lacking surprises.
Scarecrows even march us off to war,
and war should be the scariest state
imaginable --
death doled out on a random basis.
War should be the scariest, but terrible certainties
spur less fear than any old uncertainty.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 