The sense of entitlement is a trap:
as you are entitled – you do nothing;
as you do nothing – you achieve nothing;
as you achieve nothing – you feel deprived of what you are entitled to.
Tag: self
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Entitlement
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Canterbury tales
When age is but a litany of loss,
your life reduced to sorting through the dross
of past achievements,
when the age is grim,
the time is to become a piligrim.Pligrim-age, a chance to re-assess
priorities, to re-address the mess
of habits and regrets and to redress
the wounds inflicted on yourself and others
by you and mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers –
the loved and hated ones,
the ones who form you
and whom you shape.
The people who will mourn you
day in and out,
as you live and breathe
they mourn who you were and what is.
What might have been…
one can but disappoint
while one is living.
Death creates a point
of no return,
no future and no past.
No possibility of loss at last.
Woebegon – for woe to be gone
we stop the clock at death and then move on.Obituaries are but tales that bend
realities into the shape of stories
including start, the middle and the end
that banishes not sadness, but the worries
and when the last uncertainty is gone
piligrimage is finished.
Life is done. -
Moonscape
Perfectly circular moon seems glued to the sky.
Low, yellow, flat – like a piece of parchment.
Dry and uneven.Street lamps holding up to it fistfulls of yellow glow –
sacrificial fireflies.I feel flat, stuck to the landscape like a rough sketch.
Eclectic collage of bits held together with glue.Unmoving.
Unreal.
Unalive. -
Choices
Choices are difficult.
You choose life and passion –
of course you do!
But there,
in the centre,
in the shadows and folds,
death lurks.
Decay of complacency,
lack of emotional investment today
breeds the boredom of tomorrow,
black mold overgrowing your passion,
smothering it in a soft, furry blanket,
killing it through comfort,
illusion of safety,
abdication of control…
To keep life
you have to keep choosing it
every day,
every hour,
every minute.
And you do –
of course you do –
until you tire
and let the mold take over. -
Wound
The open wound is laughing at me.
Scarlet lips, glittering teeth of bone deep inside,
streaks of blood dulling as they congeal…
I laugh back at it, mouth open wide –
loudly, victoriously, triumphantly.
It is only a flesh wound –
I can master it,
I can manage it,
I can thrive in spite
and feel stronger for it.
Not like the other ones –
dull and habitual aching I feel –
the wounds I can’t reach,
the wounds I can’t heal,
they have nothing they teach –
deep under the skin,
the wounds closed over. -
The Journey
Drawing by Calcifer Shepherd
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.“– J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliott
As I walk through the world in the morning, I walk through chores:
Brush my teeth, feed my flesh, lift my eyes and observe the world.
See the light watch the shadows: frightened and slightly porous
It is braving the dark, but the darkness remains unfurled.Like a puppy, to no avail
Light is chasing its own tail.
Ceaseless effort – no rest, no sleep
Leaves the shadows dark and deep.
In the forest, the room, the mind
They just move as they hide behind,
They never diminish
Fade out or finish.And the dance goes on, like a tide – as it ebbs, it flows.
And the mind wanders off, but off what and off when – who knows?Oh, but time is a funny thing:
Lucky – spiral, unlucky – ring;
Snake consuming its own tail
Has no future, no past, no fail.
With no fail comes no gain – no foul.
As ouroboros tries to howl
It’s unable to rant and rail,
Mouth gagged with a scaly tale…It is time to abandon this train of thought
As it leaves us nowhere and profits nought.
If I look the look, talk the talk
Then I also should walk the walk.As I wend my way through the virgin wood,
All I see are multiple shades of green,
All I hear is hue, hue and cry of birds
Known just by the sounds – a sight unseen.
But my mind gets pulled from the joy sublime
Of the sight and sound, the leaves and birds
To the stinging nettles that intertwine
Unremitting brambles, as sharp as words:
“Why the fuck did I wear shorts?”As I focus on light and sound,
I forget to attend to thorns.
Joy is found, but also bound
By recurrence of cuts and burns.
The annoyances and the strain
Can be taken away by train.The train that blurs the near spares far,
Serenely cloudscapes through heavens glide.
An airplane left antiseptic scar
Amid the clouds, stumble on the ride.
Landscape renews and we in comfort cruise,
But dusty windows engender dusty views.A patch of lights through clouds gives me joy
Untampered, instant and without words.
It filters down softly to alloy
Itself with shadows in subtle smooth sensations –
The joy of pure vision midst the turds
Of unremitting complications.My elasticity declines as I get older –
Of skin and time, and arteries, and veins.
My hands and feet – they are a little colder
Each winter with increase in aches and pains,
As well as other relevant increases
In colds and flu with snottiness and sneezes.
If snake of time contracts then what remains
Is an attempt to stretch the space with trains.Ouroboros of time constricts my breath.
As body shrinks my mind expands – and shatters
Its dissolution congruent with death
But also with infinity of matters.
What cannot stretch can break and reassemble.
Abandon frame, you all who enter here.
Reconstituted, you will still resemble
Yourself to others, even those near
And dear, them, who try to fix in space
Of ageing body time’s dissolving trace.At the end of the day we arrive. It’s a velvet curtain.
The applause increases politely as curtain drops.
At the end of the day you are feeling alive and certain.
Your heartbeat is apparent to you just before it stops. -
Who are you?
First you figure out who you are not;
then you figure out who you are;
finally, you figure out you are not who. -
Berlin
My mind is sloshing in an empty brain,
Forgotten jokes rising to the surface.
Unbidden tears rising in my eyes,
Unbound, unconnected and unclear,
There is no sadness – maybe loss and mourning
But then for whom or what?
I am confused.
I wade through rain and waters of Berlin,
My mind precedes the tower of Babel –
It grasps the meaning, but discards the form.
The language spoken is of no importance
And does not register or muddy
The waters – deep and murky as they are,
With lurking Moray eels and tiny spiders
Who build a home from the air bubbles,
All light and sparkle, lightness and the beauty
Supported by a web of finest silk,
A bubble dance distorting space and vision,
Concealing occupant, revealing truth…
I wander through a half-imagined city
Of memories and loss and expectations
With long-forgotten, longed for sense of lightness.
This, too, shall pass.
It’s time to gather stones.
