Black Hole

“If you really want truth, you need to escape the black hole of power, and allow yourself to waste a lot of time wandering here and there on the periphery.”  Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Destruction begins when ego claims I am in charge 

or when a child watches another die 

for a laugh

this is where energy is pulled into the centre

and the mind looks for the authority

of the past

where I seek compensation for pain suffered 

by giving it a cloak of sovereignty, fed by emotion 

set for revenge, in the memory

that curio cabinet of anger

where a plural pronoun

becomes the new bible

the Book of Us and Them, written as we speak

finding words that stick to the target, not the bully

naming the skin by colour or a person by gender

as though there is no such thing

as our own pain, or sub-conscious

neural substrate

Doctrine is not so much a weapon as armour

remodelled and reshaped to fit the body

to protect the heart from the world

and the world from the heart

the second guess and the tears

a fluid emerging.

(Sleep With Me: Lullaby for an Anxious Planet. Ekstasis 2020)