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The Shadows Following Apparitions

like shadows they follow us
they tell their stories 
on pages 
that may or may not 
be seen, or read,
we a'muse them -

"we", of course, are truly inconsequential
in the greater scheme of things;

they are like ghosts
echoing their called hauntings,
we catch the vibrations of them,
every now and then, 
the faint echoes of stilted messages 
they are magnificently sending, 

we wake in the middle of our nights,
and shudder, grasping the veracity - of It all,

when the dark hours whisper, and 
like shadows we write back to them,
the other beings inside "us" like in "them",
we read back what they write,
thinking we are quite smart
to note what they impart, but then - 

we consider ourselves so much smaller, 

and obsequiously apart - albeit,
a part of it all, like implanted in the written briefs
of higher things, so much better off than us;
we consider the contours
of our standing on the edge of such poetry, 
there are boundaries, after all ...

this much is true -

we are the shadows
following apparitions,
we hear their words occasionally,
ecstatically and remorsefully undertowed,
we are not so shining as they, for they push through 
like comets so much more easily -

we are to them
Pediculus Humanus Capitis,
irritants, 
embracing resistance problems,
easily passed and 
swiftly exterminated 
by comment and review;

by us, they are read on the run,
for they let us know, we are slow, 
and we should pursue their gorgeous egos ...
which are ... so much faster, their intellectual disasters
mined like minds for gold, valued most highly,
posthumously, in the Evermore hereafter,

you may view, 
but do not touch,
they seem to vericate, 
for "we" are the precise opposite of "us", 
and there is never any "You" 
in this golden real estate

although the common denominator 
they would proffer, their priceless empathy -
is in reality a low equation;
without hesitation, they let us know 
without too many words -  if at all, 
that we have arrived at this party, way far too late -

the common "we",
so inconsequential, smaller, plural formed, 
to be buried, without service 
after the inevitable dousing 
in their redrum, 
we roll over

we turn to rust
amidst their Irish four leaf clovers



Candide Diderot. ‘24 




"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; 
and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, 
to be locked in."
Virginia Woolf 


Copyright © Candide Diderot

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