There Are No Heroes Without the Herd
Each year
I met September
with its calico seals of Samhain
slain in a fair death
and bled by symptoms of naked hours
and loneliness.
I shivered with
a strange dread,
not of predator or prey
but the threat
of being siphoned too deeply,
into a predictable, mass identity.
I found myself swathed
in an impatient void
where sepia changelings
twisted against wind
in contempt of order
and the chronological sequences
of life and death
and I listened
to the rebellious gossip
of familiar moon-light Chimeras
edged with infant shadows.
I was enchanted
by the chaplains of the night
and the deacons of depression
that taught me a kinship
with black sheep
and the dead.
Perhaps I should have obeyed
the wisdom of the herd,
and worshiped
the pathogenic scriptures
of text-book institutions...
focused my eyes ahead,
my mind on predetermined points
my thoughts on the packaged values
of dead heros.
The world would have loved me
if I had fed into its perception
of human perfection
instead of showing it
its potential for failure...
there are no heroes
without the herd.
I could have left the insanity
of my adolescence behind
instead of clinging to
ashes and an ember
of left-over youth
tucked into a heavy envelope
and sealed with the promise
of an inferno.
Copyright © Jean Marble | Year Posted 2009
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