These Darknesses
Don’t be fooled; positive exaggeration is not as harmless as we pretend; even that local counsellor, defending a meadow where those horrifics took place, troubles the conscience; inside we gag on legalised atrocities of war; connections are made in denial, almost without consent.
We bury worry-stuff under patios; corpses of murdered kindnesses; ghosting unspoken dreams are shared by universal mind despite concealments under breast-like curves on the great wall-chart of normality.
Out at the edges, exceptionals cannot sleep; exiled into shepherd’s huts, they herd ;locks of disappointment into barren fields; grass, isolated from earth by its own roots, grows impervious to nutrition.
We isolate to unify and scapegoat; those who won’t comply take the rap; we demand our God-given inner darkness be transmuted into theirs, even though we know this goes against the laws of nature.
Can we own our own demons? Can we feel compassion for our own depression? Can we bear to connect ourselves with homeless addicts or self-harmers? Can we accept our fortunateness? We whose self-esteem has not been crushed; who were not abused into child abuse; who were not terrified into terrorism; who aren’t desperate enough to kill others and then ourselves.
Who condones sad, sick, shit, but who can deny it happens? It doesn’t arrive from outer space. It comes from these darkenesses in us, gathered here on this magnificent blue dot; expressed by souls in torment; awful; unlawful; disconnections from the human race.
My Invisible Disability
Kind eyes for
the blind man
whose disability,
ironically,
can be seen;
but not so mine.
I look like someone
who judges and is judged;
who can compete;
for the money,
for the food,
even for the air.
No kind eyes for me,
nor dark glasses;
no white cane,
no loyal labrador
to lead me through
the needle-sharp icicles
of my frozen self-esteem.
Until I break and fall and
lose the will to live;
then it’s: Oh My Dear! and
Why didn’t you say something?
One day, it may be just too late.
I may fall upon my icy blade,
imagining bowed heads
under black umbrellas;
watching a blind man
wailing in the rain:
Why? Oh why?
Oh why?
"Like most people, I have personal experiences around depression, bi-polar disorder, attempted suicide and, sadly, suicide.
I have also watched, almost with disbelief, at how behaviour 'disorders' are suppressed or dealt with through brutal psycho-pharmaceutic regimes.
I can offer no solutions. I empathise with those whose relatives develop behaviour patterns that disrupt or even endanger. In most cases resources are severely limited and individuals end up between a rock and a hard place.
I would say, it's hopeless, if not for the resources that I've discovered inside myself. Resources, I feel strongly, that are available to every human being and that's the point of view I wanted to speak from. A human being who, by good fortune, has been able to choose 'light' over 'darkness' and while, not trying to make excuses for inexcusable acts, acknowledges the connection he has with all other human beings, no matter how far from 'sanity' they may have strayed.
It is all too easy to draw an imaginary line between myself and those who are tormented by their own demons, their inner darkness. But that imaginary line serves no purpose other than to move me a little further away from the reality that we all, like it not, believe it or not, share one world; and this world, if I am honest, is in a sorry state.
If I deny the reality that we human beings, are all inter connected, I'm deluded and in my delusion I will look for convenient scapegoats. I would like to bring this common delusion out of the shadows and have people look at it, honestly. Is this altruistic? Not really. You see if we all stopped looking for scapegoats there is far less chance of me being scapegoated by others, too."