The Constant Feast

Social interaction has always been 
plagued with adversity. 
We are routinely discouraged 
from expressing spontaneous insight. 

Instead our education, personal and otherwise, 
is set in the impersonal hands 
of anti-artistic laborers and 
excessively groomed politicians. 

We suffer this one at a time, regardless 
or because of shared company. 
We listen, receive, consider, 
respond as politely or as quickly 
as we can. 

The incensed respond through aggravation. 
The calm navigate, manipulate, or quietly massage 
the ill feelings in our guts, hearts, minds. 
And the ugliest behave as there 
weren't any disagreement in the least. 

Corporations and governments and cults 
collect more into their attendance, 
while the introspective, solitary and righteous 
sleep in handsewn blankets in countries 
of dirt & chance. 

We are caretakers and victims, all of us, 
influenced but not determined by our 
sex, age, and likewise categorization. 
We remove the skin of ourselves, of 
our enemies. We remove anything and everything 
that disrupts the flow of the longterm ephemeral. 

And surprise and denial seem bound together 
as surely as pain and discretion. 
The cobra stalks the rodent and the trees 
are as still as gods. 

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