Resistance

 I had a nightmare about pacmen shooting at me; they were shouting – Resistance is futile! resistance is futile.   Clearly the product of a fevered brain that’s spent too much time trying to write both the fall of Vietnam and September 11th into the same chapter!  I needed a break. This is what came out – Resistance IS futile.  Made worse if one is resisting because of unquestioning patriotism, absolute loyalty. Made worse in the creative process by being too attached to one particular idea, not allowing new ideas to filter in …

Have you been trapped by resistance? Leave a comment about how you handled it?

Resistance

resistance IS

a matter of men in the underbrush
 
 who don’t know when to give up

an old samurai in the jungle
 
 who didn’t hear
 
 the emperor’s paper thin whisper to put down arms

an eon ago

the wood termites went at him the other day
 
 the bones left after the maggots finished with the flesh …

… not much of that
 
 he starved to death
 
 sometime someday no one knows when

I see an animal
 
 living in the now
 
 digging up sweet potatoes
 
 foraging for jungle yam
 
 one day a bird falls on him
 
 dead from some sickness

it doesn’t kill him
 
 the brittle bird body cracking in his mouth

in the same way
 
 we’re not diminished
 
 stepping on that last century skull
 
 while discovering the primeval jungle
 
 on vacation for the summer

nor is the new emperor
 
 eating scones and drinking tea
 
 in japan

#Poetry #facingdeath #war #nightmare #resistanceisfutile #WorldWarII #Vietnam #kamikaze