Skirmish 6: The Colours of Bodies on the Earth

I

I saw and discerned
what it meant to be new;
the freshness of faces
counted for everything that's capable in me.
When the worldly walls break
and upon me ashes fall
sight and sense and parsimony
will be all I have to rely on.

II

Oh, great unlooser of tongues:
Day, always discovering in yourself
splayed life, all invigorated in the ground,
Light for me the recesses where dwell
residual loves, turned green and murky
decomposed by Distance,
that most innocuous God,
who turns faces away from one another
(They also call him the Force of Habit)

III

A fourth of the world smiles,
(most of the others frown)
moments that seem to mean everything
are torn and uprooted from the ground.
I ask favours that could never be repaid
No matter how sincerely a body tried
like carrying the weight of a week for me
or lying to the sun to say that the earth is all right.

Self-Effacement and Power Relations

1. Powers preside over us beyond our control. Masculine powers, state powers, religious powers, parental powers, sexual powers, technological powers, economic powers - the list is nearly endless.

2. We are embodied individuals. This means that we have a sense of a coherent self, existing through time.

to be continued....

Perhaps every academic discipline is a study in rebellion against one of these powers. Literature against the power mortality holds over us...