Monday, August 15, 2011

Death by Pause














As nothing stretches into nothing,
The more the silence,
The more the senseless, relentless sound
Within the confines of a taskless mind
Lets loose my grasp on what is real
And belief in what is true, strength to keep on
Keeping on time,
With time and with peace, which,
Hypothetically,
Should reign down in heaps
In this empty, gifted space
Full of noisy, numbing, fumbling nothing.

The louder outside, the quieter within;
The mark of the lack of discipline
Emblazoned in and on my head
And in moments lost when, envisioning,
This very, selfsame time to rest
I did not know—I could not!—
That which I thought I'd have killed for
Would end up, at a maddening
And so-slow pace,
Killing me
With what I think
And how, naively, I had thought
I'd avoid this familiar, endless din,
Over and over
And over again.

Friday, August 12, 2011

Ruminations on Corinthians 13:4

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."  Corinthians 13:4


Romantic love is certainly not patient, nor kind.  Full of envy, it boasts and Facebook posts when it sees itself reflected, is proud as a sonofabitch when it is well-received.  It is the rudest of all sentiments, keeping its host awake and jittery through all the garish and lonely hours, turning any taste for anything but that of one's lover's sweat and skin repugnant.  Self-seeking, it disallows consideration of or focus on anything but itself.  When not immediately acknowledged or insufficiently returned ("insufficient" being a wildly and illogically subjective term depending on the wide-swinging moods of its subject), it counts these as unforgivable, tantrum-inducing wrongs and blazes with narcissistic and self-destructive anger.  Love can turn one’s thoughts toward evil or even violence if the truth reveals anything less than what it believes it to be; i.e., that it is the center of its own universe, that nothing else exists, and if it does, it is pure and simple shit.  It inspires a shocking indifference toward self-protection or respect toward its object and an insipid fear of any minor transgression that would instantly shatter its fickle trust.

True, love hopes, but it is the sort of hope that can be irrational and far outlast love’s failure, persevering until the afflicted has rended all the hair from their head, starved away 20% of their original countenance, alienated and flippantly bored all of their friends with their alternating depressive complaint and manic joy and braggartry, grown totally inconsolable and gone completely mad.

Unless, of course, it finds spectacular, too-intense, transcendent, blissful, nirvanic company with another of the same crazy and infected sort; in which case you can take all of the aforementioned sufferings and square them either up or down, depending on the length and tenacity of the relationship, and of those involved.

Is love worth all the sacrifice?  The suffering?  The violent and possessed-obsessed behaviors that overwhelm even the meekest of the meek, or the strongest of the strong, or the calmest of the calm, reducing them to moody, obnoxious infants?

History, poets, authors, laymen, royalty, philosophers, Walt Disney, the top-twenty hits on the music charts since the beginning of time, and even I, say yes. Why?

Because DAMN; when it’s good, it’s fucking spectacular.