and it doesn’t come so easy so you swallow the jameson and cue the music and let that big ball rolling behind your heels roll over you. you find yourself boxing with the irrational. you find yourself taking a scissor to all the family ties now. how do you argue for safety to save a life against the desire to be comfortably numb?
you find yourself walking the tight rope again…only you’re steady. you cry but soon enough the walk gets easier.
delete the social media accounts, ungoogle yourself, cut off the consipiracy believing brother and the non-mask wearing thugs who want to visit a 93 yr old woman and be comfortably uncovered… cut them off, end the years of yessing and okaying and picking up all the broken pieces to salvage family blood.
blood means nothing now.
i find myself alone. 56 years of never being able to count on anyone but the dead. or the songs in my head, the characters in stories on my shelf…teddy, seymour, franny, and zooey, kilgore, billy and jane.
in every lifetime i’ve probably heard the words “you care too much”. it’s always been my undoing. the ball rolls over and that’s what it whispers as it’s crushing my bones. turn a blind eye, let it go, keep moving forward, step over the bodies, take more than you need, cheat to get ahead… but that’s never been me.
humans hate that. because it challenges them to be better.
the planet is listening to this litany of comfortably numbness. the flowers still grow and bloom, but where are the children to smell them? the sea dances with the wind and sky while its inhabitants slowly die- fauna and flora alike… prayers fly up to heaven while bullets pierce flesh
and the white men plot on how to spin the narrative…
who are we?
i’m free. tethered to noone now. Mom is slowly dying…each month has brought a small whirlwind of disaster. and i find myself walking along a cliff’s edge unafraid – 50 years of mourning has prepared me for.
war
disease
millions of deaths
gun violence
unimaginable loss of life over what???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
power
money
arrogance
*FEAR
i hang on to pages in books, bright sunshine, rainstorms that soak my jeans and make my shoes soggy, the toss of a basketball that hits the hoop just right, the angst of johnny rotten, the brooding of robert smith, the elegance of patti smith, the genius of shakespeare, the soul piercing words of bowie,, the beauty of bernini, the defiance of goya and picasso, the melancholy of ok computer, the strength of jane eyre, the optimism of teddy, the prayers of franny, the anger of sylvia, the dazzle of martha graham, the yawn of a cat, the sigh of a dog…
these are my family. flesh and blood, bone and muscle, tendon and ligament, spirit and thought.
‘take more than you need’ That’s the crux of it on many levels.
‘Ungoogle yourself.’ Yes please.
But it’s the price we pay here in this marvel of communication. We exchange anonymity for the ability to hear each other mull over the meaning of the Universe. I like reading your view of it.