11 Comments
User's avatar
Richbee's avatar

One of the ships of state has past; left a wake in the fog. Flag flying.

man of aran's avatar

And a dubious captain at the helm. Plato would not be happy.

Gloria Horton-Young's avatar

…standing at the harbor watching a wounded civilization drift toward the horizon — flag still fluttering, but hope dimmed to sepia.

man of aran's avatar

Nice! Thanks for that, Gloria.

KR (Kenneth Rosen)'s avatar

Brings back the slightly frightening, empty mystery of that silvery motherly tool, a tailor's thimble.

man of aran's avatar

How so, Kenneth? I’m curious.

KR (Kenneth Rosen)'s avatar

Its compressed, non-specififc, haunting alarm--like that of a silvery thimble's seemingly infinite tiny indentations' mutely arrested, immobilized warning of potentially painful, self-inflicted injury with a sewing needle.

man of aran's avatar

Ah I see! Scarier than I expected. Don’t remember my mother doing much sewing, but I think it’s apt. Thanks 🙏.

KR (Kenneth Rosen)'s avatar

Alan, I read my hurried, harried (did I offend him, etc?), overstuffed remark and realized I was thinking of KR's thimble and Girling's haiku, in which the Beast, unconverted, murders Beauty, simultaneously. Ever since "schizophrenic shears" popped into my head to conclude the riddle Of the ONYX EEL, I've been thinking about the inescapable ubiquity of duplicity. But I have been anyway, ever since reading Peter Slotertdijk's THE CRITIQUE OF CYNICAL KNOWLEDGE. By

KR (Kenneth Rosen)'s avatar

Um, By CYNICAL, Sloterdijk means dialectical dynamics, thesis and antithesis constituting...whatever we think, do, say, etc.

man of aran's avatar

Hmm. Sounds like Hegel, the little I know of him. Definitely no offence taken, just my relative obtuseness.My inverted Beast and Beauty are a Rorschach pair that can take readers almost anywhere, I suppose. Your musings are most welcome here!