Ramadhan - Creativity Twelve

Twelve Day

Pieces of a pile

When the face is down and drowned and stones are pummeled from the back of the head, where do you go?

The answer is: nowhere. You just have to wait for the nasty people to stop bashing you over the head with stones, then regain your strength, and eventually, get up, get your face out of the mud, and get your life back on track.

This is the meaning of life.

Dear me,

Today a lady gave me a pistachio. I ate it after dark.

Now I think that a pistachio has to be a good metaphor for something, but I can't think what. All nuts are a good metaphor probably. You could probably make a whole series of poems loosely based on nuts. But I'm not going to do that. It would be nuts.

The pistachio is opened and from it a baby alligator crawls. Slimy and wriggling like a rattle snakes tail. It's all very scary to squeamish people. The crocodile hunter strokes its body from heaven. Everyone else runs away as it scampers across the well-lit circular table in space. Screaming and shrieking at it. Why? Because it's different.

A drunk young boy makes a noise from the bottom of his being. It's a sad, wavering, almost yodel-like noise. I can imagine someone swaying backwards and forwards as they make that noise. But I can't see him, he's somewhere on the street. Another car drives by playing loud music which shakes the walls of this room as though it were an Earthquake, despite the fact that I am quite far from the road.

What is happening to the world?

A circular saw chops off bits of wood into smaller pieces relentlessly. Before that, a chain-saw hacked down huge trees relentlessly. Before that, blood came squirting out from the first tree they tried to chop down. Pure red blood. This confused the men with hard-hats and chainsaws. It made them think about what they were doing for a second, as all went still, and the silent blood dripped down the side of the tree, from the gashes and the wounds. After a few moments however, they turned on their chain-saws and carried on hacking and gashing and sticking and tearing. The tree didn't stop bleeding. Their clothes got stained in all the blood and by the time the tree came down they were soaked in it. It was dripping from the tips of their noses.

Because they wanted money to feed their families and feed themselves, they murdered unmercifully.

A magician slices a box with a thin woman lying down inside it. He's wearing a top hat and grinning to the audience like some kind of moron. Grinning away as he saws with a perfect regularity. He could never break out into a sweat with neat, made-for-TV movements like these. His eyebrows are raised with his grin, giving him the look of a preposterous buffoon who thinks he knows what he's doing. He pulls the box apart into two separate spaces, making it seem as if the woman has been separated into two parts. Unfortunately for him, someone tampered with the mechanism beforehand, and now the blood and guts of the thin female are spilling all over the floor. He's flabbergasted, and that's the word he uses to describe his reaction to her liver splattering down onto his shoe as he is questioned in a court of law four months later.

"I was just flabbergasted!" The stupid magician said to the interrogating lawyer, who didn't actually care one way or the other. Why should he care? He's not being paid to care.

"All this killing has to end somewhere!" This is what the idealistic young activist said as he slammed his fist down onto the small, resilient table, which was especially made for activist meetings. He just didn't understand how essential war was to the financial success of his countries government. The (understandably) huge sense of injustice he felt then, coupled with his obvious inability to do something major to solve the problem, would turn him into very meek, pitiful man in his late 40's.

What he should have done is separate each cause and each cure from one another, understanding, as the wise believer does, that all positivity and negativity, from whichever source it springs from, is truly inter-linked, connected. His sense of outrage at social injustice and war should have been partially remedied by something more achievable than an 'end to war' or an end to 'social injustice'. Something more realistic and close at hand, like perhaps finding a woman to love and spend the rest of his life with, producing children who had faces a little bit like his, and a little bit like hers, finding a place in his heart where happiness could live, mercifully, with knowledge of the sad state of the world still in his mind. He didn't allow himself to do this though, he thought it more noble and true to the cause if he continued to struggle and suffer, not allowing himself happiness for as long as those he struggled for did not have it. In the end, those he struggled for died, as they would have done anyway, and he died too, but as an unhappy man, with no-one to care for him and no love to speak of.

What a life.

Immediately preceeding the intense 20 minute spell that saw me writing that series of short pieces, I said this to a friend who I happened to catch online, the first friend I'd spoken to in depth for over a week:

Me: sorry im at university and im not feeling wonderful at themoment
probably not the best time to speak out loud
i dont want to crack ur cloud and make it rain.
My friend: haha.......to late for that man.
sorry that you're not feeling your finest.
Me: its okay.
ill get over it in prayer and hopefully through writing.
i am sitting here wondering if i can add anything to my project tonight since it is day 12
but im not sure if i can or will.
My friend: ......you know whatever comes comes...you've got to feel it.
Me: i always feel it. it's just if i want to be me. it's like, as miserable as i can become from exterior things, if i want to write something, or make something amazing,, then i can still always do it.
i just sometimes dont want to. i feel like its a betrayal, id rather be miserable.
its betraying how i really feel.
and i dont want to be overly negative either. cos it's not right.
i dont want to share dark dark thoughts in a month that is overwhelmingly positive
My friend: can you put it down for yourself at least....get it out at least.............i don't know, it's human you know. You can't always be positive, i don't think it's possible. To be negative, to be sad,...it's human
Me: yes it is.
i think ill try something.
if it comes then so be it. ill make the decision u know

Y.Misdaq, Ramadhan 12, 1427