"So the poor have hope & injustice shuts its mouth" Job 5 v16

Through our constant striving for convenience, we are eradicating the raucous and edifying beauty of our true environment and replacing that beauty with a safe but completely faux environment. We have a society steadily undoing itself, it might be argued, by its win over resourcefulness. Clever, ambitious and always in search of greater efficiency, we have, created a world of push - button, round - the - clock comfort for ourselves.

The basic needs of humanity - food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, transportation, and even sexual pleasure - no longer need to be personally laboured for or ritualized or even understood. All these things are available to us now for mere cash. Or credit.

'Show up for your own life...don't pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle - feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber thorugh life in an instant - gratification sugar coma...be awake' (Last American Man, Elizabeth Gilbert).

Sleeping at last...

Put your coat on, this city trembles.
Keep your chin up, as you untangle God
From cold blood and bruises.

We are X-rays of something broken.
Cursive bloodlines write every forecast:
An orchestration Of dissonance and innocent surrender.

When our color dies,
We will bury the ashes of time,
And we will earn new eyes.

Wrists get tired rewriting futures.
Our bodies beg us to be creatures of habit.
We are creatures of habit.

Only with careful hands
We’ll turn their fangs into feathers and cures.
Only with careful hands
We’ll divide the prisoner
From the pioneer.
Clever beauty,
Umbrellas folding.
In architecture, our lines will measure
A map to find us.
Blue ink will guide us home.

Cranes are creeping, lifting metal,
We will find new ways to settle,
Tipping scales from the killer to its prey.

I can feel the weight around us,
Climbing every rib inside us,
A sanctuary in a lion’s mouth

At the end of the day, when it comes down to it, all we really want is to be close to somebody.

Scarlet

Middle of nowhere
Finally you can breathe
Nobody knows your name
It's easier

Shut your eyes tightly
Clench your fists 'til they almost bleed
Cautiously, lightly
Gently expose what's underneath

And all you feel now
Is the scarlet in your day
Even it's real
You can't stay

So there you go
You're gone for good
There you go
You're gone for good

Your mind is swollen
From months of thought without release
They've taken their toll on you
This very moment
Of timid and fragile honesty
Is precious and rare and fleeting

And all you feel now
Is the scarlet in your day
Even it's real
You can't stay

‘...it is a process, a continual struggle. But it is a necessary step toward redeeming an unjust past, underpinned by notions of restorative and transformative justice, and, of course human rights. Only through such a restorative process can normalisation be achieved.’

Jeff Halper

To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a little, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love–I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence. (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, pg. 247)