Metaphorical trees and forests can be a real bitch.
It's easy to sit and complain. It's even easier to give up. There are a million ways to do it, and there are dozens of chemicals that can kick your 'give-up' right in the ass. You can make it seem like you are just doing what needs to be done, but not if you never think. Not if you never use your brain. Don't take the easy way out. Don't make those excuses for yourself.
Bitch, you need to look at the forest AND the trees. You need to take your blinders OFF. Think critically. Break out the old sniff test and see if shit checks. Like, if one of the trees tells you that it will fix the economy by crippling working people and enriching the wealthy...
It's so damn tempting to look away. Don't do it. That's what they're counting on.
Look at the forest and the trees. Look at the flowers and bees. Hug the ones who love you and hold their feelings gently in your hands - that is everything. Lead with love. The world is a massive place filled with good, bad, and indifferent. Try to be one of the good trees.
Your forest will appreciate it. And remember, forests are good places, even with the few, inevitable shitty trees. They are outnumbered by those who still grow.
Thank you. "Try to be one of the good trees." I love that.
ReplyDeleteAnd the forest is a natural healer, the trees all connected and communicating, like we do.
DeleteVickie J
"Lead with love" indeed.
DeleteBodies know how to heal. They weave the magic of biology, the fingerprint of evolution. Worker drone white cells carry their brave fallen soldiers away, isolate them from the healthy population. It’s a microscopic miracle. Red blood cells flex their muscles. Broken skin knits itself back together. You don’t believe in God, like this invisible man in the sky, but maybe there’s a bigger power at work than your puny self can comprehend. You want to believe it’s true.
ReplyDeleteYou go outside. You still your rattled soul, exhale the collected tension, aching for the signs of a world shaking the sleep of winter hibernation from its eyes. Birdsong fills the rain-soft air. Robins flutter. Purple crocuses shyly open their petals, hungry green shoots reach for the sky. And the peepers, tiny frogs defrosted, chime in unison as if they have something of vital importance to say.
You listen.
Always listen. And I love those peepers. Even in darkness, springtime brings some hope.
Delete"...kerosene...wait for the inevitable explosion." I'm trying desperately to not BE that explosion. To see past the rotten wood to the beauty of the forest.
ReplyDeleteAh. Finally let me login...
ReplyDeleteA Dystopian Future
Humans have spent centuries intentionally killing each other with wars and murders. Other than possible incidents of PTSD, there is no penalty for opposing forces killing each other. Murder, on the other hand, has been punished by a variety of methods over the years, most commonly by imprisonment for life or the death penalty. As punishments evolved, it was decided that death should be administered as humanely as possible. Neither punishment for murder has proved to be a deterrent over time
The Universal Criminal Punishment Directive of 2613 mandated that the only punishment for murder would be death, and not a humane one. The convicted prisoner would be given a choice between two methods. Drowning or suffocation. The thinking behind this was that knowing murderers would suffer a horrible death as the penalty for their crime might discourage potential killers from killing.
It is 2615 and you've been convicted of murder. Which do you choose?
#FridayFiction
#FlashFiction
#2MinutesGo
#AmWriting
Personally I'm not a big fan of the death penalty, but if someone has killed kids, I could be for it. Drowning or suffocation? Hmm. What I wonder about are those administering the deaths. Do they carry that with them? How do they go home at night and talk with their families? I'd like to know more about where this story might go.
DeleteI've known a few people who have killed, and not a single one of them deserved death. The death penalty carried out by a nation state is barbaric; notice how it's generally the rogue nations who allow it. That said, anyone hurts a loved one, and I wouldn't need a state to mete out justice. But yes, I like Laurie's thoughts: what it would be like to follow the executioner.
Delete“Sonorous fruits grown for overripe hearts”
ReplyDeleteIf a smile has a sound, so does a scowl.
We wanted to think it was something weird, something supernatural, while events argued against that, but if you accept this as routine, you lose your handle on everything. The people were ordered to chant, but what you might expect as rain was merely spray.
Picture a man with tufts atop his skull like bats or lynx but drawn in charcoal, a being rendered in the greyest of shades.
“Do you think of carnivals as sad?”
“I think of everything as sad.”
So she clawed out her intestines regardless. Her singing voice the voice of a loon rising from a layer of mist.
Neighbours, friends have gathered out front. Good. Keep watching.
See these fucks? Let their silhouettes burn themselves into your memories.
Here they come. Ready to do the easy thing, the killing.
They want you to cower, to fear their certainties.
Don’t do that. Just don’t. Because they’re wrong. And even for bad men killing is hard.
The great freight shunt of iron, endless assemblage and the clash of steel, screech and spark and a red sunset, smoky North American nights. Our bellowing locomotive lungs.
When the pain of the world seems unbearable, pause and remember that we’re still here, and that change is still on the table. Don’t quit. Begin to cry for all the planet’s loss and you might never stop.
This daunting granite face. Look first. Then climb.
Three fingertips cling to a fissure, insect thumb and white chalk pinkie searching antennalike for the next. Free solo this. Wait for me there, with patience. Held by a boulder past all life expectancy. The wait and the weight. We reach and we teach and we each feel a thing when we clutch with the tips of our fingers and thumbs. We grasp. And sometimes we don’t win.
A ridge. A slip. A wrench. A hiss. A cry. A loss. “It’s over.”
They made her walk out on a bridge that ended in mist. All along, she knew not its end nor its anchor. Its loss or its bliss.
And that was it and this was this and this is how belongingness works.
"This daunting granite face. Look first. Then climb." I love this line. Even with disembowelment included, there is still hope and joy here. Thanks, D.
DeleteAlways trying to find that glimmer of joy in the dark!
DeleteUnravel
ReplyDeleteHe stands in a line that never was,
never was drawn for him.
He never had to wait,
perforate a numbered card,
stand with hesitation in the cold,
counting a million reasons why
when there was only one.
He measured moments in gold dust,
bathed his body in its memories.
The truth was always somewhere else,
impatient at an alternate station,
his hope tested til the last.
Yet he endured the passage of time,
waited for this scarlet ball to unravel.
We are ghosts in the machine,
waiting for our turn to be seen.
Vickie J
I like the same lines Laurie highlighted. That last couplet is so rhythmically perfect, with an unexpectedly satisfying rhyme.
Delete"He measured moments in gold dust." I like the images here. And that last line!
ReplyDeleteThank you :)
DeleteThis
ReplyDeleteWe are journey,
this line we cannot take together,
emotion without direction,
a change outside a moment,
this rebegin that never can begin
because it never was.
You can live it as an echo
or step away.
Vickie Johnstone