Things of Stone

Cold steel and slavery once enforced servitude;
But we are free now to live by other obligations.

Whips became rules,
Shackles, a regulatory framework
On which the days coagulate
Like blood clots, until the living,
Or the half-alive, stumble,
Thrombosed and breathless.

In the heart, pressure internalizes
To the point of collapse
Into a failed organ, a thing of stone.

The cruelty of prisons
Is no longer in chains
Or walls slick with damp,
With the sweat of torture
Running down.
Now, it lies in the way
Acceptance solidifies around the soul
In the languorous night.

In our auspicious times
We have no need for cages;
No barred windows, no locks.

The world let itself be the prison,
This world we made,
Where sunlight is rationed
And every hour appointed
To tasks and necessities;
Not one of them our own.

We are cast as turnkeys and wardens
Standing guard against our own escape;
Against the thought of it.

Then, our going becomes a futile step, a flitting,
One prison cell exchanged for another.
Our hearts and minds are left ignorant
Of our shallow breathing, and every breath set free
As we slip between this nowhere and nowhere new.

Limits are set for us, hidden,
And we need never find them.

We have come to accept, for safety’s sake,
The miserable wisdom of others.
We have taken the coward’s coin
Forsaken all danger, sat secure
Protected by agile lies.

In all our sage forsaking
We ourselves are the ones abandoned.

© BH 2014

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Revisiting two things: existence and security. It's a conundrum, how we try to nail down the troublesome aspects of living into an illusion of safety. We breath a sigh of relief when we think we're free. The thumbscrews are gone, the iron maiden and other bloody instruments. 

The world is still full of blood though we happily keep it at a distance while we feed a dreadful fascination for it. There's vilification and ire all around us but we know the enemy, the fanatical and the deranged. The moving finger points, and having pointed, moves on…

But I fear the soft prison. The feather-bed confinement. Alas, we're bought and sold like bully-beef to the slaughter though a cloak of humanity makes it seem otherwise. Clang! The door slams behind us. Never mind, this precious freedom we have is the price of our silence. Shh!