Star differs from star in glory.

We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.

Laughter V

Laughter is never insignificant.

Laughter IV

Laughter is commitment.

Laughter III

Laughter is attack.

Laughter II

Laughter is disguise.

Laughter I

Laughter is vulnerability.

House of Neglect

I am the voice of the lied to,
with the children playing in the pantry,
under the flag of rich provision.
Who is moving on the bedchamber stairs?
Who is there?

“There are boundaries to be maintained.”
I believed you. I believed you.
Adder in a silk sleeve, disaster and appeasement
in hand, hiding swollen glands under your neckband,
you spoke with forked speech, and
I believed.

Silk sovereign, polished black
by my boy’s fingers, waxed,
monocled, and, what I never knew,
maniacal.
What a new game,
what a shock, what a shame.

What mother can run to hold back the master,
the maid, the disaster, the oncoming cave-in?
Foot by foot the butler made a butcher,
the bastard shame on every one of us below,
inch by inch the subtle touches clustered
on the open sore of our innocent obedience.

You, “Master,” with your wide waistcoat,
know the songs you’ve written
but how quickly have you forgotten:
“A house neglected against itself will falter.”

Basis

It's easy to believe in the corruption of small governments in foreign countries. It's easy to let the idea into our heads that the men leading ragtag militias on other islands are selfish, brutal, ruthless, and care little for the anything other than their own gain and the opportunity to grasp absolute control. We can see pictures of their faces and envision them shooting children with assault rifles. We credit them with the rows of dead bodies, burned out buildings, and massive destitution. We believe they are just that kind of people.
Somehow, it's not so easy to believe the same of our own people, our own nation, our own leaders. Let me tell you this: there are no "kinds" of people, there are only people. People and power and the drive the first have to gain the second.
Why do we want so badly to believe that in our nation, where the power and wealth to be seized are gargantuan in comparison and the means to access them are themselves far more powerful and far more subtle, the people at the top, or within reach of the top, are benevolent and caring, selfless and considerate?

Voice

Voice puts power to words.

Slow syllables steal souls.

Loud, hard, angry embers
eat a hole in the heart.

A little laughter pours
a phrase from a silver basin.

The wide wind under the
wings of song is the strongest.

In breath, in breath, in breath,
words are made all they are.

Choice

I was thinking about paralysis from fear of the future, realizing that the things that cause the fear are going to be a part of any future I choose. I'm not going to be able to escape suffering, I'm not going to be able to escape failure, abandonment and pain. In realizing this I didn't feel despair, instead I felt very freed. Nothing I do is going to allow me to escape agony and atrocity, so I shouldn't let fear of these things freeze me. I need to choose the life that will make living through these things worthwhile, I need to choose the life that will sustain me through the horrors (because they're going to come, whether I like it or not), and I have a chance to make that choice. I have the opportunity to pursue a life of incarnation, joy and flourishing.

Precipice

Blind cat, deaf cat, sunset
in the valley of dead industry.
A signal spire, high on the ridge,
offers guidance, a silhouette
against the sky. Black horse
on the slope crawls down,
white horse down the valley
stands still. All forces converge
above the ground, all tensions,
all resolutions, all desires
are like the four ginger legs
of the kitten at the snake hole
pulling on the tuft of catnip.
The very ground itself is slipping
through time's magnetic variance,
wondering what change is
in every instant to alter course,
to falter, to blunder off solidity
into a dervish axis. Every object
stands in this instant on the brink
of its slow coming future.
A small dietary twinge, and the heart
is weakened to the later failure.
A vaccination, a reaction, and a lifetime
of slow death to pulmonary wasting.
This road is the horse that ran.
This town (in the unmarked
fields) the horse that waited.
This cat, once blind, lives
all life in darkness. Unknowing
visits the unhearing. The flies
fall dead in the steel city
furnace heat, the tower testifies.