pride Archives

burn

a meeting with the emperor

please don’t put the new fortress there, said the old woman to the emperor. remember what happened to the last one?

he picked her up, spun her around, smiled. he sang a happy song about self-love.

it’s going to burn, she said. she lived in a tiny hut near the well. she was calm and very polite. she made no mention of his nakedness.

you are so wise! he said, laughing, and your eyes! wow, are those wells, too?

then he assured her not to worry. he had the best of intentions and these were the opposite of burning. all good! he sang, spinning off.

later, when the blaze ate the hillside and everyone on it, including the old woman’s hut, he cried, SEND SOMEONE! HELP!

o god, he whispered, after the shouting.

but by the point, even the helicopters had to retreat. the woman near the well was silent.

Cake

Mouth after the tail of itself––to eat it, too.

Even amid the abundance of that offering, you were distracted by that incessant worry over the stability of your reflection in the glass, thinking that perhaps you could not steal enough to compensate for the original trespass, and it is true, after all, that some suspicions, nursed long enough on themselves, can only find their error by proving themselves correct.

Beyond Notice

A tribute to the unseen.

I can accept appearances without keeping them up, without submitting to your notions of their perpetual preeminence. Call me what you want––and this, too. I can absorb any label because I hold none with any pride. Some create awe, sure––like living, like mother, like still here––but this is an awe for what is given and just as easily removed, that I get to witness for the time being, this fleeting now, swelling in all of its fullness, even when the bulk of any presence, any matter, any one of us at any time––is entirely unseen.