Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Home
Submit Poems
Login
Sign Up
Member Home
My Poems
My Quotes
My Profile & Settings
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Soup Mail
Contest Results/Status
Contests
Poems
Poets
Famous Poems
Famous Poets
Dictionary
Types of Poems
Quotes
Short Stories
Articles
Forum
Blogs
Poem of the Day
New Poems
Resources
Syllable Counter
Anthology
Grammar Check
Greeting Card Maker
Classifieds
Member Area
Member Home
My Profile and Settings
My Poems
My Quotes
My Short Stories
My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder
Soup Social
Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us
Member Poems
Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Random
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread
Member Poets
Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War
Poetry Resources
Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
Your IP Address: 18.117.100.20
Your Email Address:
Required
Email Address Not Valid.
To Email Address:
Email Address Not Valid.
Required
Subject
Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
… as I child I heard these words by Immanuel Kant from my late Dad over and over again …’you must act in a way that if everybody did it your thinking and deeds could be the foundations of a Universal Law’ he was not much of a philosopher but coming from the idols’ home town it was duty that he quoted from Groundworks of the Metaphysics of Moral big words for a young child and I’m not sure that my father understood the meaningful words for he was a soldier who commanded and obeyed saw the outskirts of Moscow in the war and the destruction of ethical values much later the idiom ‘imagine there is a war and nobody takes part in it’ took on the importance of rebellion to its conclusion of passive resistance and my beloved mother asked me with love and admiration in her eyes ‘why do you always make it so difficult for yourself by speaking the truth’ a concern of barely veiled encouragement for the adolescent young soul who barely out of nappies truly believed he would conquer an adult world by doing only what felt right as long as long as he bore all the consequences later the student revolution proposed in all its rawness that where right becomes wrong opposition becomes duty as the only logical culmination so I naïve and resolved fought with Sisyphus’ boulder in my strong will rolled it in front of religion’s grotto to imprison dogma and false ideology embraced the shadows in Plato’s cave and grazed rationale and intuition while my mates played robbers and coppers I secretly smoked a peace pipe impersonated Diogenes and proudly declared ‘yes stand out of my sunlight’ when Alexander asked if there was anything he could do for the Ionian man I would rather live in a barrel of hope than in a false palace based on convention who wants to be mediocre when normality is a mainstream statistical concept according to which good standard variations result in the false claim of deviance ‘there are no problems but only solutions’ rang in my ears like a broken record in which Wagnerian darkness had to be expelled with punk rock and Nirvana and yet introjections cost me dearly when the music became my own swan sang a cacophony of buried emotions because a father warrior was far too broken to teach how to feel instead of following ‘do as I say’ recommendation for life in which performance and achievements were subject to counting one’s toll inner child became feeble and resembled a Nietzsche on psychotropic steroids a muscle man with nowhere to go but to succumb into mere oblivion and void surely if everyone committed suicide the planet would be a much better habitat but the rat in myself refused to abandon a sinking ship and called for a life raft sent a few flares into the sky and grasped some driftwood from a distant shore when the solution was nowhere to be found any longer at the bottom of a bottle my Dad’s anecdote of a doctor is ‘an alcoholic is one who drinks more than I’ opened flood gates of shattered glass in my tumbler and I found an antidote of love kindness and compassion for others from friends and for my own Self we can't select our family and their well-meant intentions but are able to chose what virtue is when to surrender and aim to forego a cycle of utter destruction ‘as long as you put your feet under my table’ what if there are no more tables Epicure’s garden is not a feast of sex drugs and rock but a humble symphony in which intelligent conversations are foundations of beauty and common sense how I wish that my father had been able to talk and listen but then I give thanks to the wall he erected which I am now able to deconstruct one step at a time 14th November 2020
CAPTCHA Preview
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required