The Medium is the Message

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The Medium is the Message

The medium is the message,

the container is the content,

the configuration is the culture.

The cartridge is the bullet,

the wrapping paper is the gift,

the tone is really what is being said.

The lack of legal representation is the contract,

the headmistress’s office is the reprimand,

the peace treaty is the declaration of war.

The flavour is the food,

the restaurant is the ambiance,

the garnish is what you’re really paying for.

The national anthem is the nation

the vow is the relationship,

the oath is the testimony.

The gavel is the final word,

the law is the moral compass,

the prenup is the alimony.

Four Feet Tread

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Four Feet Tread

Four feet tread in Eastville Park,

trying to find a rhythm, a synergy,

something’s just happened,

life has done what it does every so often,

it’s hacked at the knees,

and silence is uncomfortable, but required…

Words from a wise friend sooth like shea butter or aloe vera,

starting the healing process,

but it takes care and attention,

like a mother in tune with her infant child,

it takes a heart alert with restraint,

and eyes that glance at fidgety fingers,

and a sixth sense that says ‘wait’…

But the fool (and we’ve all been the fool),

already knows the answer,

“everything happens for a reason”

And an already cast down friend is cast a little lower,

and in the heat of desperation, we all need a reason,

we’re all looking for one.

Mr. Middle Age

Mr. Middle Age

Mr. Middle Age has a few stray greys, 

his tone, warm like cinnamon, his bosom is filled with a kind of wisdom.

Many have seen a man riding swift on his horse, on his peculiar destruction.

but few perceive. 

Only a few shut their mouths and refuse to receive the raw delight of the cynic’s syrup. 

They are the ones who see,

they are the ones who will live,

but the rest just give their mouths and necks to be stroked and fed. 

Preparing the ‘sick bed’,

he quickly diagnoses you with youthful naivete, 

and a quaint book of old mishaps and life lessons appears.

He’s the bearded shaman, the mystic seer,

he ladles his sweet viscous remedy and melts all your crisp hope to reality.

Every dampening is his medicine,

all youthful vigour is assuaged. 

What is it you want, Mr. Middle Age? 

Your aura is unsettling, your smile is wry, 

you look me endearingly in the eye and prophesy. 

A language pours from your lips like warm wax into waiting ears, 

it’s runny balm for the ache of your years, 

it’s healing by prevention, 

don’t hope, don’t hear of anything beyond your scope of reality.

Thank you, sir for your counsel,

but your cynicism is not for me.

Mother

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Mother

Mother is world, chaos.

Mother is whirlwind of love and comfort and chastisement,

all at once lovely and terrifying.

Mother is mouth open wide with laughter and shouts of battle cry deliverance.

Mother is disdain at my nakedness,

mother is monster with eyes charged live

with contempt at smallness,

mother is muffled tears behind closed doors over drowned years of suffocating pain,

mother is perseverance and collapse,

I, a grown man, run around this world with an umbilical cord tied to her lap,

Chair board meetings with her eyes in the shadows,

See glints of her wild smile in my daughter’s folly.

Mother is all at once swallowing ocean and frightened suricate in the corner of a desert somewhere,

Forever nesting and alert,

…. surrogating the dreams of her own mother.