Bitter As A Blue Ruin
One thing you can see on the palms and forearms and fingers of some murder victims is slashes and knife wounds known as defensive wounds. Your killer is coming at you with a knife or a machete and you hold up your hands in front of your face so that is what takes the brunt of the initial assault.
But then he gets to your throat or your heart or into your brain through your eyes and when you are laid out on the slab we will note those defensive wounds, you can be sure.
We know to look for them.
*
For the first 3.5 billion years of life on earth, it was just a bunch of single-cells floating around.
Prokaryotes.
You couldn't even see them with the naked eye, they were so small.
The whole planet lousy with them, but if you landed on it, you'd never know there was life at all.
It wasn't on the right scale for us to apprehend.
*
We are limited by our own scale of size and temporality, so that everything that falls outside of our scale, which is 99.9 percent of the Universe, is beyond our ken.
*
It is little wonder we're so inept.
***
God bless us, every one.
*
But then he gets to your throat or your heart or into your brain through your eyes and when you are laid out on the slab we will note those defensive wounds, you can be sure.
We know to look for them.
*
For the first 3.5 billion years of life on earth, it was just a bunch of single-cells floating around.
Prokaryotes.
You couldn't even see them with the naked eye, they were so small.
The whole planet lousy with them, but if you landed on it, you'd never know there was life at all.
It wasn't on the right scale for us to apprehend.
*
We are limited by our own scale of size and temporality, so that everything that falls outside of our scale, which is 99.9 percent of the Universe, is beyond our ken.
*
It is little wonder we're so inept.
***
God bless us, every one.
*
posted by tearful dishwasher at 7:13 PM
4 Comments:
nice post title
Nursemyra-
It's from a Tom Waits song, "9th & Hennepin"
Well it's Ninth and Hennepin
All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes
And the moon's teeth marks are on the sky
Like a tarp thrown all over this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds
And the steam comes out of the grill
Like the whole goddamn town's ready to blow...
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos
And everyone is behaving like dogs
And the horses are coming down Violin Road
And Dutch is dead on his feet
And all the rooms they smell like diesel
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And I'm lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway
And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat...
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear
One for every year he's away, she said
Such a crumbling beauty, ah
There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
til you're full of rag water and bitter as a blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen...
And I've seen it all, I've seen it all
Through the yellow windows of the evening train...
Ah, we are smaller than the smallest spark, soon extinguished.
Tearful: I hope sweet is now mixing with bitter.
It's been good to visit, as always.
Mim
be careful - in your opening you sound like a dandylion
or maybe i mean
a
daffodill
question - if i get frozen shoulder
will i still be able to raise
my hand>
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