ill at ease

Ill at ease
does not mean a discomfort
to the point of nausea
aroused in a state of self-satisfaction.

I suppose it is comforting to know
that this same word, Anxiety,
is on everyone's nerves
and coming out through the lips as
verbal indigestion, along with a liver and onion
aftertaste.

How many times have I needed to scream
a curse word
with the most volume possible to project outward,
to release some other demon
banging on the walls of my soul to escape,
as if my sound would shatter
gates

and makes me ill
swallowing this thought back like moonshine.

That was not a question.

Our survival depended upon this fine line between
cooperation and fugitive, patient and shaman,
poetry and prose
words and thier usage.

We made statues of security and braced ourselves
with agendas, acting in stone, we planned, we waited,
we toiled and cried over the temporal state of
poison, we consumed all we could with-
stand.

Resistance said not a word
about its origin.

Circles of influence

As with Death and Being

(in love),

you only know it when it comes

close enough to smell-it gone.

This doesn't help us.

It is curious to wonder

why we still get dizzy

(in tight circles we spin)

when this has always been

the Prime Mover

of things that (are like) matter.

It is earthshaking to think all of us

know something

(is speaking directly to us)…

As with Kodiak bears and Great White sharks

act Bigger and be LOUD-pretend you are more than you are.

We don't dare admit

this is not enough.

Survival is still

just our luck.

Painting by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Title: Ulysses Fleeing the Cave of Polyphemus

“Eckersberg spent 1811 to 1812 in the studio of David, practicing life drawing and history painting. One of a series of subjects from the Odyssey, this is perhaps the most compelling. The giant Polyphe­mus in his cave looms over a sheep, searching for Ulysses and his companions, who blinded the one-eyed monster. The men have escaped beneath the bellies of the flock; Ulysses, at the end, prepares to join his companions. The Mediterranean light is dazzling. We viewers remain imprisoned in the tenebrous foreground as Ulysses slips away. Eckersberg’s study of the eloquent contours of Greek vase painting is put to good use here.”