Out into a winter night, with snow and silence and fright. What's beyond the torch's light? Rubber boots on crunching snow. Oh, how far we have to go. An hour's trudge until sun glow gathers on the horizon. Then walk 'til the day is done -- again abandoned by the sun. We'll set up camp in the dark, try to get flame from a spark, and dread when next we embark... a few hours down the line.
Just give me a simple brick hut with its doors tightly shut, and a cooling crossflow breeze, shaded by banyan trees. I won't be expelled by AI or sold the daily lies. We can talk live, not by "hit send" -- clueless to the world's end.
You are not the heroes
you think yourselves to be,
dreaming up perfect worlds
that can never be.
Anyone can picture
a far-fetched perfection,
and groan of other's faults
with dead-eyed disaffection.
The headline read, "The World 's at War!" It turns out "with halitosis." I couldn't bring myself to read more. I don't need no bad breath gnosis.
There never was a Golden Age,
a time much better than right now.
But playing martyr 's all the rage:
to think our world the garbage scow --
whose stinking mass forever grows.
Lest you think that I'm saying these
are times of pure and sweet repose,
Please, let me put your mind at ease:
These times are best. These times are worst.
(To blatantly steal from Dickens.)
This twist is just how we are cursed
to shriek like that sky fall chicken.
A white-knuckled grip on the rail, though the ship is sinking. The brain insists one hold tightly; there's no mind for thinking. A samaritan pries at your fist, but it will not budge. In giving up, he feels guilty -- conscience jury and judge. You couldn't wedge just a single breath to crack a space for thought. A simple thing it is to let go, but look what fear has wrought. A quarter million tons now drags you to the cold, dark depths. Until the body's unthinking gasp of watery breath. The hand lets go, but still you sink trapped by your last mistake. The tragedy of a grasp reflex that you could not break.
I sit within an empty cave. It's empty, that's for sure. It's dark, so dark that nothing shines. What sound is that? A purr? I'm in this cave, and not alone, but with what I can't say. It's in the back where it's jet black -- a predator? Or prey? I'm walking now; I don't dare run. the ground is all cockeyed with stalagmites and stalactites. I grope, in need of guide. And feeling through Stygian space, I bust open my head. Warm blood, I feel, run down my face. I'm squeezed by rising dread. I hear a squeak, a mouse strolls through; then silence is restored. If only my mind were so rid of its outsized horrors.
There is no breath that's like a breath
that's taken three miles high.
And never so deep was a sleep
after days of light in eye.
And water is the most beloved
when burning thirst is slaked.
To starving souls no gourmet meal
e'er bested bread, fresh baked.
I stared, and stared, into a leaf
until my vision changed.
And I could see the whole, wide world
so artfully arranged.
The leaf, it mapped my universe
from atom to the sprawl.
Compressed, layer-on-layer, there
was one and, at once, all.
But before I could grasp all that
this vision truly meant,
a gust of wind did catch that leaf,
and fluttering it went.
I've seen in ordinary eyes a special twinkling glow. In rough and sinewy muscle I've seen a grace in throe. From rotund torsos, I have seen a lithesome prance or strut. I've seen a thing called character, in schnozzes that kink or jut. If beauty below the surface, it finds you splendor-blind. Then defect 's not in the object but in the viewer's mind.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 