'If a lion could talk, we wouldn't understand it' Wittgenstein Would it talk, but in such a thick, lionish accent we couldn't understand a word, or maybe speak perfect English, or whatever language we happen to speak ourselves, but sound to our biased ears as if it was only growling? Would it play tricks on us, hold long conversations from behind a tree or rock, or call us up on the telephone, selling timeshares in safari holidays?

The cool of the breeze on a warm afternoon
Caresses the curtains and rustles my hair.
Behind me, a squeak like a sudden raccoon,
And vertigo shatters me turning.  The air

Caresses the curtains and rustles my hair.
I'm blinking to see someone else at my desk,
And vertigo shatters me, turning the air
Electric: it's me, but I'm huge and grotesque.

I'm blinking to see someone else at my desk
Away in the distance.  The atmosphere seems
Electric: it's me, but I'm huge and grotesque,
Distorted like something I'd see in my dreams.

floating through dreams in urgent dismay
unconscious of pending break of day
when will cold night cede to dawn
that sleepy eyes should feast upon
my shadowed soul inhales fear
engraving a memory upon old year
and sowing seed to arable soil
disperses new hope rejecting toil

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A cigarette balances
on tightly drawn lips,
flame growing brighter as
tension racks a contorted
face.

Hands, barely controlled,
shake as they maneuver
as short-lived indulgence.

Breathe in numbing toxins,
breathe out hissing snakes of 
smoke.

And Repeat

Repeat until the voices stop
pounding hate against your
skull;
until logic reigns supreme.

Self-control in exchange for cancer

One strained smile instead
of insults and confused children.

One more day where such
staged love is tolerable.

So, as it happens, I’ve come to see that knowing a lot is not knowing enough: hypocrites everywhere teaching what they preach and failing their own tests; ignoramuses ignorant of their own ignorance, wading in mires of misconceptions, molding mountains out of mole hills in which to entrap the virtuous intellects; tiresome debates here and there, persistently aggrandizing so-called controversies, burdening burdened masses with ear-bleeding sing-songs of the glaringly-obvious “good” and “bad” of a rapidly-changing world.

There was a time when when children measured their age by the height of the apple tree planted at their birth. One of them never stopped growing—the tree or the child? Towering over the rest of us, thick skinned and skinned knees. It isn’t my fault that we confused the one for the other, standing right next to each other you could hardly tell the difference, gnarled hair and anxious blossoms. At the moment of conception, the apple seed feel down into the soil. Nine moths later the tender green shoot poked its way above ground, wriggling fingers and toes.

A car wheel crushed the leg of a family on a monsoon evening. His spouse and son seemed strings broken. But the accident couldn’t mute his vocal cords. Words live in lines, and lines in voice – words and voice defeat his wounds. Her scarlet smile sprouts again. Fresh shoots appear in the farm of songs.