Feb 23 2009
Falling into Old Traditions
It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;
I am he who knew what it was to be evil;
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant;
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.
The words ring in my ears like a bell, I am not alone, I am not alone, we are not alone.
The teacher lectures on in his class, the students pretend to listen, the girl to my left checks her facebook, the one to my right stares into the oblivion of her eyelids, and I write. I hear him reading the words from the book, and they reverberate through my soul. Emerson speaking in my ears, there is not only creative writing, but creative reading. This is creative reading.
Emotions engulf my self, or what fragments of my self remain after the pain and the alcohol diluted and dispurified them. I need pieces of each, bits of the old and bits of the new. I will fall into my old traditions in hopes of reforming the soul which used to be mine. This is one of those traditions.
My heart feels alone but my mind tells it I’m not. The same verse repeating over and over again, over and over again, over and over again.
I am not alone, I am not alone, we are not alone, we are not alone.
