- MODERNITY -

our world is changing – it always is, and our spirit is breaking as we allow the familiar gods of might and money to drag us further from the heights of our new and enlightened understanding.
fashioning confusion, frustration and the claustrophobic need to escape to better, purer worlds we send ourselves onward into a pit of malevolent despair... as we always have.
we are prophets and gods, devils and demons, full of colour and life yet bleached and blind; we know where happiness is not and we run towards that dark place because we only know to stop when faced with love.
we are all as one and all alone, we want to love but fear to touch, we teach and preach but know only vice and misfortune.
we shame ourselves with our lies while praying for the truth, and that truth will be hard and cruel but it will set us free.

no more war, no more hate, only love and devotion and pleasure. then we will crumble because we require balance, and all will be lost.
we must isolate the individual to save the group, a group of individuals whose shared experience must be positive while that of each part seesaws.

we must love and trust, and accept that we will be betrayed. we must believe, we must share, but we must not control.
the world is too big, and the world is too small, for everyone to agree and not feel anger or dismay.

we all want peace, simplicity, happiness, individuality, acceptance, love. only through accepting the impossibility of it all may we find our salvation.

let the fools and clowns have their way, let the idealists and the sharp-minded serve us, allow each and every man the authority to police and judge.

which norman finklestein?

[note: this norman finklestein]

it is the breaking of a world
its shatter reverberating before my ears

he's pulling levers
widening views
and i think
i think it's like staring at a jackson pollock

with his flicks and drips of words
actions over message

then i realize
that it's nothing like a painting

he's straining the chicken soup of his reality backwards
dismembering his discontent
feeding himself to his ghosts as they speak through his own mouth
lips curling back and teeth bared around a smooth accent

there i am
there we are
enchanted

well covered

i have covered the well
with cloud blown glass
whose shapes seem to swirl and dance in the dim light

if i listen closely
i can hear the echoes of the hammer and nails that sealed it

naming things

there is no death
we are crumbling
under the enormous
immeasurable weight
of our inevitability
each change, twist, turn
part of a larger orchestra
in sickness and in health
for better or worse
until acceptance

on a hot, humid morning

it's high summer
and the tree by the bus stop
with its heat-bleached bark
and vivid green leaves

throws its shadow under the wheels of the bus

which i get on
i carry on

green paint

smooth white
marble tiles
and skin, covered in
green paint

a soft tint
splattered over face and table
crouched over
a finishing touch
white and green teeth
alternatively bared and grinning

evolution

there's blinding pressure
in those unpacked boxes
of broken and unbroken toys
that define memories
of what was
and what should have been

the pictures are warped
even those i have yet to hang
the books are mouldy
even those i have yet to read

and the to-do list just keeps on growing
while boxes and boxes of who i used to think i was
pile up by the door, to be thrown out and recycled
and i let go
of shades of who i think i'll be