Leashes

I came across a cartoon that stated, “If you need the threat of hell to be a good person, then you’re just a bad person on a leash.” Putting aside the concept of hell (of which I am more than skeptical), I will say that there is a ‘bad person’ within each of us and life is a struggle to keep them on their leash. It is hubris to say “I’m a good person” and ignore our weakness, our all-too-easy corruptibility. Yes, there is a ‘good person’ within each of also (though some do seem to keep theirs on a leash!).

My ‘leash’ is not the fear of hell but a belief in good and evil and the need to choose a side. I will not say I am good and go my way (as those who passed by in the parable of the Good Samaritan); I will work at being good. I will exercise my free will and take part in the struggle. It is part of finding purpose in existence. The truest of hells is that which we create for ourselves here and now, the life without purpose or direction. Despair ever lurks at the edge of existence; some are better than others at keeping it a bay.

Inevitably, this is a theme in much of my writing. Characters make choices and not always easy ones. They attempt to arrive at what is the right, the good. Sometimes they fail. Life isn’t easy, you know—certainly not as easy as saying we are good or have empathy. It is all to easy to ignore that empathy when it doesn’t serve our selfish wants or becomes burdensome. Acting does not necessarily follow knowing.

So we have our leashes and should recognize them. Otherwise, we are adrift, understanding nothing of life nor of ourselves.

Ways, a poem

 Ways

Walk with me to the moon tonight;
tomorrow we’ll find a path to Mars
among the overhanging stars,
and following our Milky Way
we’ll wander on until the day
hides all behind its rising light
and every twinkling trail dispels.
We’ll linger but to make farewells,
a moment in the gardens of dawn
to watch the pale fading moon sail on;
we’ll walk again its ways tonight.

Stephen Brooke ©2023

a bit of verse, run off rather quickly so revision is certainly possible (even likely)

Audience

I find myself in agreement with Thomas Merton that one should write neither for ones audience nor for ones self, but for God. By this, I (and no doubt, Merton) mean looking beyond the wants of any readership and seeking truth.

Discarded, a poem

Discarded

I found a new mask to wear today —
it fit as well as the last;
the old one was best thrown away,
a vestige of the past.
But when I showed how I had changed,
folks stared at me aghast;
I think some thought me quite deranged —
some ran very fast!

Perhaps, I thought, I have been rash —
I do seem to appall;
and found amid the other trash
the face they should recall.
Discarded once, but never more,
yet I hear voices fall,
and folks shrink from me as before —
it wasn’t my mask at all.

Stephen Brooke ©2023

first draft-ish and may well change

Chopsticks, a poem

 Chopsticks

I tried to play Grieg

but was out of my league,

so ‘Chopsticks’ it must be.

I’ll bang on the keys

as loud as I please;

there will be no stopping me!

My left and my right

are inclined to fight

though I try to make them agree;

but one finger, each hand,

makes much less demand,

so maybe I’ll stay in key!

 

Stephen Brooke ©2023

I was moving some music books from one shelf to another and there were some Grieg piano pieces among them. That was enough to set me off.

Theory, a poem

A graphic of a poem I wrote a few years back. It is likely to show up in next year's published collection, which will feature more of my 'light' verse.

Burroughs and the Black Man

Despite being politically conservative and despite the casual racism that occasionally pops up in his fiction (mostly the early work), Edgar Rice Burroughs was no friend of colonialism or of white supremacy. That is evinced by the somewhat savage satire on Kipling's famed 'Burden' poem, published before ERB wrote the Tarzan and Barsoom books that made his name.

The Black Man’s Burden

Take up the white man’s burden,
The yoke ye sought to spurn;
And spurn your father's customs;
Your father’s temples burn.
O learn to love and honor
The white God's favored sons.
Forget the white-haired fathers
Fast lashed to mouths of guns.  

Take up the white man’s burden,
Your own was not enough;
He’ll burden you with taxes;
But though the road be rough,
“To him who waits,” remember,
“All things in time shall come;”
The white man’s culture brings you
The white man’s God, and rum. 

Take up the white man’s burden;
’Tis called “protectorate,”
And lift your voice in thanks to
The God ye well might hate.
Forget your exiled brothers;
Forget your boundless lands;
In acres that they gave for
The blood upon their hands. 

Take up the white man’s burden;
Poor simple folk and free;
Abandon nature’s freedom,
Embrace his “Liberty;”
The goddess of the white man
Who makes you free in name;
But in her heart your color
Will brand you “slave” the same.

Take up the white man’s burden;
And learn by what you’ve lost
That white men called as counsel
Means black mean pays the cost.
Your right to fertile acres
Their priests will teach you well
Have gained your fathers only
A desert claim in hell.

Take up the white man’s burden;
Take it because you must;
Burden of making money;
Burden of greed and lust;
Burden of points strategic,
Burden of harbors deep,
Burden of greatest burdens;
Burden, these burdens to keep.

Take up the white man’s burden;
His papers take, and read;
’Tis all for your salvation;
The white man knows not greed.
For you he’s spending millions—
To him, more than his God—
To make you learned, and happy,
Enlightened, cultured, broad. 

Take up the white man’s burden
While he makes laws for you,
That show your fathers taught you
The things you should not do.
Cast off your foolish feathers,
Your necklace, beads, and paint;
Buy raiment for your mother,
Lest fairer sisters faint.

Take up the white man’s burden;
Go learn to wear his clothes;
You may look like the devil;
But nobody cares who knows.
Peruse a work of Darwin—
Thank gods that you're alive—
And learn the reason clearly:
The fittest alone survive.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (c.1898)

It may be noted that interracial marriage appears and is condoned right from the start in Burroughs's fiction. Or maybe inter-species marriage in the books set on Mars?