I have looked at these things, these dramas, these<\/p>\n
Games that people play from so many angles and different perspectives<\/p>\n
That I have confused myself.<\/p>\n
Writing about them in the third person, I’ve invented characters with pain so
\nintense only<\/p>\n
Hell could relieve them,<\/p>\n
Some of them are believers of political rhetoric and sinister propaganda<\/p>\n
And religious dogma so inane that believing must be a sure sign<\/p>\n
Of mental illness.<\/p>\n
Walking in the park, or standing motionless in front of a spectacle that<\/p>\n
They never notice, you can find them gnawing on<\/p>\n
The bread of life, fingers dripping with the sticky entrails of their feast.<\/p>\n
God, their god smiling over the endless fetish of their insatiable desire<\/p>\n
Goads them on to<\/p>\n
Conquest and empty absolution.<\/p>\n
Sometimes they gather in rooms with gilded altars and raise their voices<\/p>\n
In song, self absorption and vanity, soft little prayers<\/p>\n
Floating slowly up to heaven on little, fluttering wings<\/p>\n
But most are mired in the filth<\/p>\n
Of petty self righteousness and tacky, meaningless, pretentious displays that<\/p>\n
Fall over on the ground in the rain.<\/p>\n
Then there are the ones who live in a world of plastic things<\/p>\n
That don’t quite work.<\/p>\n
They keep throwing them away and replacing them but each substitute is<\/p>\n
More perplexing, and more expensive, the instructions<\/p>\n
Make less sense, and the easy open packages only open<\/p>\n
When chewed apart by teeth.<\/p>\n
Out on the highway they feel the pulse of the world, they drive<\/p>\n
Here and there but nowhere they ever get to is where they want to stay.<\/p>\n
They chat incessantly into cell phones but most of what they say<\/p>\n
Is never final, it only adds to the crazy chatter, the only constant,
\nintelligible word is more,<\/p>\n
And at the end of the day more is never more, the more there is <\/p>\n
The less the soul is full<\/p>\n
Tomorrow they will try again to fill it up while it only empties its essence in
\ndefeat.<\/p>\n
But then there is you with the center always holding<\/p>\n
True to the simplicity, the essence, the aura<\/p>\n
Simply predictable because truth never changes it stands fast<\/p>\n
While fashion becomes extinct, styles one by one drop into memory<\/p>\n
Some locked away in forgotten closets<\/p>\n
Are resurrected and celebrated<\/p>\n
For a little while.<\/p>\n
In your little house there is always the real, there is<\/p>\n
Black coffee and nicotine stained fingers the eagle’s view out your window<\/p>\n
Close friends and family meeting and embracing on<\/p>\n
Holidays and occasionally by accident, furniture well worn<\/p>\n
And loved, the use not fading away the memories<\/p>\n
Lodging intrinsically into the fabric of your surroundings.<\/p>\n
You are an inspiration to me with your minimalist lifestyle and your<\/p>\n
Disdain for the plastic and the disposable, your<\/p>\n
Quiet patience with the great unwashed, you have traded the quest for the
\nunreal<\/p>\n
For the essence so long ago that the road is now old and worn for you<\/p>\n
But it is still going only forward,<\/p>\n
Now there is only pain and loss ahead.<\/p>\n
This is the way of the warrior, and now even in the golden years of living
\nthere<\/p>\n
Is the choice of a warrior to know that your most important work must<\/p>\n
Be done in pain and hopelessness. To know that the desire for things is<\/p>\n
All around you but to be dead to the earthy passion of it all.<\/p>\n
To sense at the end of life that the love of the temporary is an illusion that
\nshields the heart from pain<\/p>\n
Leaves one alone and small in the big unknown.<\/p>\n
If you could see in yourself what I see you would know how incredibly beautiful
\nand special you are,<\/p>\n
You would see the years of decision and childbirth, work, peace, love, loss,
\npain, joy and soul changes<\/p>\n
Emerging beyond it and looking in the mirror one day and asking<\/p>\n
Is this really, really me<\/p>\n
It’s never a question of what does it mean, in the end we all wind up wondering<\/p>\n
How did this all happen?<\/p>\n
As all things go, we are eternal, even when the hour grows dark<\/p>\n
Dreams of death and agony and separation from love and comfort<\/p>\n
Wrap their steely tongues around our dreams,<\/p>\n
We must cling to our beliefs<\/p>\n
I’ve thought about this a lot and I’ve come to believe<\/p>\n
These things we have come to feel, these items that we’ve trusted to be true<\/p>\n
Are in fact real.<\/p>\n
– Mike Glover<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have looked at these things, these dramas, these Games that people play from so many angles and different perspectives That I have confused myself. Writing about them in the third person, I’ve invented characters with pain so intense only Hell could relieve them, Some of them are believers of political rhetoric and sinister propaganda … Continue reading “Mother’s Day Ode to the Walking Wounded”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motherbird.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}