Sic transit gloria mundi
Tag: poetry
-
Borders of perception
In his preamble to ‘Life – A User’s Manual’ Georges Perec talks about the contextual nature of perception, as seen in jigsaw puzzles. He explains how, by manipulating the cut of the pieces and thus taking them out of context, the puzzle-maker can completely determine the puzzle-solver’s experience, ‘the ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles’. I can, of course, sympathise with his desperate hope that the author can determine what the reader experiences while reading his book. But it is delusional. Our perception of an image, a text, or, in fact, a reality is largely determined by our biases and habits of thought. Politicians and advertisers prove it over and over again by inducing a large percentage of the population to ignore what is – in favour of what they think ought to be. So, don’t get unduly upset at writers and artists. They want to believe that they are movers and shakers – and who doesn’t? In fact, they are at best co-conspirators.
-
Nursery rhyme
What are people made of?
What are people made of?
Pictures and words,
Hopes and hurts,
That’s what people are made of.
What are people made of?
What are people made of?
Clothes and skin,
Mind and machine,
That’s what people are made of.
What are people made of?
What are people made of?
Cultures and schemes,
Mirrors and dreams,
That’s what people are made of. -
Requiem
They say your heart aches.
Mine doesn’t. My back does.
There is an uncomfortable feeling in my spine.
It doesn’t hurt, exactly, I just know it is there every second.
Tears occasionally leak from my eyes, like pus from a wound.
They have no meaning and bring no relief.
My mind is desperately searching for something:
words, feelings, escape –
but there is nothing there.
Just a body:
stupid,
mute,
incomprehensible.
Experience unmitigated,
voiceless scream,
feeling that has no name:
not sadness,
not pain,
not anger –
nothing eating at my bones,
squeezing my tear-ducts,
stripping off words,
exposing the emptiness inside and out.
My thoughts go into familiar grooves
and then slide off again – into nothing…
I feel old.
I feel chilly with understanding
that most things just are.
Not for something.
Not because of something.
They are – and there is the end to it.
Here.
Now.
It. -
Self-portrait
Who am I?
Am I reflections of the world or the mirrors reflecting it?
Where do I begin?
What is inside and what is outside?
Inside and outside of what?
There is no one answering.
I hope there is someone asking. -
Twilight kiss
The wind of time is getting stronger.
It blows through the layers of defence
and chills me to the bone.
Hold me tight
against the wind,
against the tide of time,
against the world.
Fill up my field of vision with your face,
block out every sound with your whisper,
and every taste – with kisses.
Let’s pretend. -
Maya
Observation changes the event,
expression changes the thought
but the event does not exist without observation and thought – without expression.
Observation is an integral part of an event, as language is of thought,
they give them their shape.
Good and evil,
mind and body,
love and hate –
they are just words
simplifying the complexity of experience into language.
And yet they determine who we are and what we do.
