Raw Goods

Public success, private failure.

Let it then be settled:
to walk on the path of disaster,
don't worry about that
ninety percent who perish before
being summoned by means of a bell;
embrace utter and complete failure
to explain the entire world.

His mom has a good factory job.
At age four, he protested a parent's departure
not with a cry but with a categorical law:
"A child should not be separated from its mother."
He decides he wants something different:
who is the best, the most spirited?
This is a question neither of empathy,
nor of counting noses and joining a majority.

We dug for money; that was a no-go.
One can neither forgive
nor make a promise to oneself.
It couldn't have been more clear.

The other four are practically independent:
disdain for those who fail to think,
distrust of the contemplative retreat,
a long field trip from the shortest means
to overturn the excessive body count,
lying and cheating in the streets while
the most rarefied thoughts are transformed
into public deeds at a moment of expression
as if they had done it a hundred times before...

There's some arrogance there;
part of him wanted to say,
Why did I do this?
Nearly insensible to pain -
rotted away, a hundred days;
beautiful, insensate precis:
Cro-Magnon in safety.

Wait – I believe in us...
we must look into these matters.
These task, for you and me, is
to make present the standpoints
of those who are absent.

posted by judy j @ 10:19 AM