dictators

TRIGGER

There’s an ache in the ground,

it’s so old, it’s so old

There’s an ache in the ground

like a groan and creak

And a joint that must speak

of its pain and misuse.

It could work so beautifully if it was allowed to do what it flourishes at, but instead it was forced, shoved, crammed into doing the slog work for someone else. Not even that that work required doing, so much as that the dictator wanted the satisfaction of breaking spirits, of forcing young, fine, elegant, creative bodies to bend and break under brutal tasks too heavy for them.

There is a malevolent spirit that glories in turning what is beautiful to shit. The victory lies not in the uglifying. It’s not in the act of destruction. The victory lies in the aching loss of those spirits forced to give up all they hold dear, all that makes their hearts race at the prospect of the day ahead when they first awaken.

Malevolence loves destruction for the symptom that it is, but the real glory is in the eyes of once vibrant souls – the light snuffed out, nothing left in there to read, no different than two dull black marbles. There is always more life, joy, spontaneity, creativity, hope to crush, and there are always more dictators petty and grand leaping at the chance to do it.

There’s an ache in the ground and the ache should be the joy of the dictator, but it is actually proof of the dictator’s too-short grasp. The ache is evidence of the good. The ache holds the potential for heart to flourish because it holds the awareness of what is alive vibrant and bursting and free even after it has been lost. It is only when a dictator can snuff out all aching – when he has demolished every last subjugated soul in his kingdom – that he can truly be victorious. And in that moment he has lost everything.

Overreach. That is there waiting to happen in all of us. But overreach is a given for the tyrants because their intolerance drives them relentlessly. They believe they have the right to forge the world to their liking – not at ‘no matter what the cost’ but conversely the more the transformation costs others dearly, the happier the tyrant.

Intolerance. The deepest possible refusal to self-examine. The adamant insistence that the whole of existence – its unstitchable integrity – be busted up into manageable segments. This chunk of hated materials over here in the despicable pile, demonstrably alien to anything that has to do with the dictator. This chunk – bleached and cauterized to meet the demands of the tyrant’s notion of purity and goodness – is clutched close to the chest for all to see.

Pity the design element in humans of forward-looking eyes that allows us stubbornly, willfully to stagger forward toward our stated goals, oblivious to the detritus, crud, shit, suffering all around us. To our left, to our right, behind us our garbage along with ours and others’ suffering – all the stuff of life we steadfastly refuse to stand and face for fear we become engulfed with it. Instead we will look ahead until we lose the ability to turn our heads from side to side, and the rotating elements of the neck will become vestigial and we lock into the forward-prone posture of a bowsprit, damn the world we leave behind: we’re headed for greener pastures.

How we have cultivated this forward, run-away-from-the-crap-that-is-reality aspect all through our evolution.