Author: wordsforghosts

The Madness of Crowds

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The talk,
        the talk goes on forever;

unfocused, the tumult of noises sounds
like the symptom of a fever.

I pick out one voice after another,
disappointed as each
seems to me to be a foreign language
I cannot speak.

It’s the silent ones I can understand,
shrouded in loneliness or pensive thoughts
        or maybe just nothing at all.

Are they, like me,
        bewildered
                as to how the past
can blend
from Spring into Winter
so swiftly?

As the noise, the
        noise goes on forever…

Sand Mandala

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For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness

Keeping Quiet – Pablo Naruda

 

Using water to gild wild flowers with gold leaf
for hours.

The technique requires practise that few will ever
master,

                            yet still you keep trying,
while the world around you ignores all that you
want to
                            give: a delicate gift;

desperate attempt to prove that you still exist,

before a silence, so intense
descends, just as you have been dreaming of
                            ever since

your first fascination
                            with gold leaf & flowers.

All of this is temporary*

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The City swells with life
& you,
insignificant,
stare at the people & the buildings
& the mundane purpose.
Overwhelmed by
the tide, so an anchor is made:

One must stay busy.

Smoke dances the in rain
framed
by the sickly-white, luminescent light
of the night.

A walk, awake
between night & day, surrounded
by the City, &
always the same shapes:

they’re trying to say something,
these buildings, something
more than their designer or
creators ever intended

I don’t know what it is
any more than they do.

So find nearest breath of green
& living things;

to tilt your head back,
lay down upon the the grass,
& stare at the immense & ancient darkness of

the sky…

*“Emnacipatory politics must always destroy the appearance of a ‘natural order’, must reveal what is presented as necessay and inevitable to be a mere contigency, just as it must make what was previously deemed impossible seem attainable”– Mark Fisher

Constant inconstancy

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It isn’t the same, it
                        can never stay the same.

No grass seeds always ready to
raise their blades again, only
                        
                        change.

Slow or sudden,
willed or unbidden,
                        there is only change

& nothing else.

Habit & time,
                        being & repetition
build an image of difference
                        & permanence,

but there is only change;

the one constant
                        dressed as paradox:

there is only change,
                        change

& nothing else.

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Returned now to habitude & ugly
old attitudes resume.

Refrain from razor-blades against
                                the skin
but now place them instead between the teeth
so during sleep the mouth
fills with blood

forcing shame to keep
a silence unredeemed
by graceful movement or delicate features;

eyes that do not see the open,
                                absent
of the pulsation, the differentiation
                                separating
life from death, death from dying.

Until, once again, the morning comes when
a mother bends to brush against
                                her child
& the animal rejoins the wild challenge
of existence:

begin a new day, with
different hunters, different prey yet
always the same ancient struggle
                                despite
the panic, the shit, the pain that afflicts
all living things.

Grace is acceptance, grace is
defiance;

for the hunter to eat the prey must die,
& for each to drink
the gaze must sink down toward the water.

There, where the reflection resides.

There, where there is nowhere

                            to hide.