Codependent - Narcissist

 I, a Pleaser from childhood, from birth,

obligated to placate grown up wrath;

peacemaker, quiet, diffident, withdrawn,

Cooped up in the corner of Brains over Brawn;

How could I resist the toxic Controller,

Strong, decisive, driven, confident?

Slender of waist, beauty sublime,

cutting words, and infinite anger?

Clothed in the garb of piety,

Secure in her self righteousness?

I was a sitting duck

fish in a barrel

a hypnotized deer in the headlights

Slaving to appease her vicious caprice

with grovelling compliance

I lost myself pursuing her approval

And still she left

Abandoning me

to my fear of abandonment

Global Deception

What if all the censorship is not just a sudden deep concern about hate speech on the part these social media companies and mainstream media?

Once it became clear the news was fast losing viewership, the next frontier - the free internet and social media - couldn't be left to sit unmolested.

 

What if they actually take their role as "the front page of the internet" seriously and therefore all the censorship is really an effort to push certain narratives globally, and to silence the actual truth?

 

Certainly would explain why any deviation from their narrative is instantly met with a cacophonous chorus of anger and shaming.

 

Or why any competition that allows free speech suddenly loses all the means to operate.

 

Something nasty is in the works, and we ain't seen nothing yet.

Animation challenge DAY 1

 

Let Us Break Their Bonds Asunder

Under the pretext of Coronavirus, governments have committed themselves to a global reversal of GOD-given human rights. Human rights, properly conceptualized, are the common heritage of all humanity resulting from the eternal gospel of Christ, and secured over the centuries through the blood of many martyrs.

Whether through malice or neglect, this reversal of human rights by governments has been ruinous for the common man. Small businesses have come to ruin while monopolies further enrich their billionaire owners. This represents a massive transfer of wealth, a widening of the gulf of economic inequality as bankruptcy and unemployment further disinherit a middle class already long beleaguered by inflation and debt. All the signs point to an overreaction, and all the trends indicate that they fully intend to completely overreact.

Multinational corporations are openly showing their hand in the high stakes arena of politics and governance through their censorship of voices that do not support their narrative.

"Fake news" adequately describes the state of bought-and-paid for mainstream media.

The internet is crawling with "fact-checkers" at every corner. 

Social media is one vast Propaganda Open Day.

And that election was a travesty.

Already the threat of a New Normal is declared a done deal: "Things will never be the same again."

Goodbye human rights, goodbye rule of law, goodbye privacy, goodbye freedom of conscience, of religion, of association; we are fighting the virus, and climate change, and religious fundamentalism, and terrorism; new gremlins newly sprung up in this 21st Century which you ancient rights and freedoms know nothing about.

Let government therefore be all powerful, let big business join the party (strictly for your own good you see), let all religious leaders pronounce their blessings on the effort, let all media sing from that same script harmoniously, and let the masses shut up and fall in line, for vaccination plus full spectrum electronic surveillance plus whatsoever else the New Order will deem suitable to a New Normal.

Who dare call it conspiracy? Covid 19 is real!

PSALMS 2:2-3
The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 

Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us

The information superhighway

A library of self aggrandizing autobiographies
A gallery of portraits of the abandoned
An asylum for miserable recluses
A whirl of coordinated confusionA map to stay existentially lost 
The world's moral sewer.
Smile for the selfies!

The Siege of the Worshippers of Mammon

Under the terms of lockdown dictated by the virus all remain quietly indoors, craving no more than a return of all the world to that blessed state of normalcy that erstwhile prevailed. We pine for a return to normalcy, that neurotic state of universal victimhood in which every man was for himself, the weakest be damned, but at least people walked the streets and mixed freely.

The media has attained unprecedented heights of relevance with the level of attention focused on them. "How many cases? How many dead? Sanitize! Isolate! Should there be a lockdown?"


Restrictions on movement and speech multiply. Trade suffers, commerce languishes, transport grinds to a halt. Traffic jams? What traffic jams? The economic juggernaut is brought to it's knees.  The money is dried up in an effort to dehydrate the pandemic. Tension mounts, no word of a cure.

Every day freedom recedes into the realm of idealism, a hazy horizontal mirage, a throwback to the glorious days of normalcy, in which the dollar answered all things, and reigned supreme. But now its supplicants are perplexed.

Boxed in and nostalgic, in fear for their lives and livelihoods, the people eventually give up their rights and liberties. With the dearth of liquidity, with the money addict's supply choked to a trickle, one by one he relinquishes his hard-won heritage to secure the drug. "It is an emergency,"' he tells himself, "When this is all over I'll get it all back." All sacrifices to a god that answers not.

The dealer having cultivated the addiction has withdrawn the supply. After a long enough period, withdrawal symptoms lay waste his customer's resolve. Composure is entirely lost, and dignity abdicates in hunger's favor. The customer, totally drained of resources and driven mad by desperation, offers himself, mind soul and body, in exchange for sweet release from the torment of hunger and privation.

Suddenly with clarion blasts the brazen gates of bounty are thrown open to the starving. Behold your hero, your dealer. Behold your god, Mammon. They are received joyfully, with open arms.

Saint Augustine on Kingdoms

A pirate was seized and brought before Alexander the Great. He asked the emperor what the difference really was between piracy and government, besides the scale of action.


"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity." Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."

Originally quoted from St. Augustine's book City of God
copied onto here from https://oll.libertyfund.org/quotes/200

Blue Shoes at the End of the Tunnel

It is a miracle how I got through university.

I was a broke kid in the midst of rich kids.  Constantly felt lost and out of place. Couldn't hang out with the cool crowd. Looked, felt and acted out of place in the few instances I dared to show up at a rave, and didn't know enough to actually avoid caring as much as I pretended not to. It got to me.

Naturally my introversion was amplified in this social wilderness. I mostly hung out alone, sinking deeper into my personal black abyss every day especially after I finally gave up on finding acceptance. No cool clothes, no hot girl, and forget about a car; I worried instead about how Mother could even afford my fees and meals.

Fortunately there was football and swimming. I clung to these sports with more wrath than enthusiasm in a desperate attempt to sublimate the fury of frustrated youth. And the library was big and well stocked with variety. It helped to distract me from all the fun I couldn't afford.

One time an unsought-after crisis befell me. In my eagerness to make friends I lent my only pair of football boots to a teammate who showed up for a match late, hung over and ill equipped. He ran the boots down to shreds in the space of ninety minutes and handed them back to me in the most casual manner, "thanks dude," and dashed off to some other party with his buddies, leaving in my hands a stinking muddy mess of rags and studs. I put a brave face to it, quietly hoping he would make good for the damage, and retired to my humble hostel room to while the ever-present hunger away.

But the days went by and I had no shoes with which to play football. they only had swimming twice a week in those days, and that was grossly insufficient to exorcise my frustrations. So the blackness grew within, with anger and hatred to boot. Depression set in.

But as if in answer to a prayer I needed to make but didn't know I should, Mother traveled to town uninvited and took me shopping to Gikomba. She bought me a second hand pair of blue Adidas F50 boots for 1200 shillings.

12 dollars! Best gift I ever received! Literally saved my life.

Love you Mum.

Scammed

Looking deep in her eyes

which shone mysteriously at you

in the dim twilight gloom,

you mistook greed for lust.

Her full lips glimmered

with lipstick and licking,

her stare abated not,

langourous though her eyelids.

Hypnotized by shallow dimples,

bedazzled by bared legs,

unsettled in your pants,

You fell foredoomed.

Her bosom protuberant

awakened your thirst; 

for a taste of milk

you bought the cow.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

Did she not flippantly toy with you?
Bankrupt of gravity befitting the day
with a gathered throng in full view
Did you not struggle with dismay?

No precedent was set, you made-believe,
just her quirky humors misfiring again.
Best at this point no offense to percieve
good practice anyway to cover her sin.

She meant no ill, your gracious thought,
casting aside with her oversight
the pang of regret, the jolting doubt,
foreshadowing hurts she will inflict.

Nobly you played the hand you got
and dignified the choice you made.
Lastly you embraced your happy lot
and made of that lemon lemonade.

Ecstatic Flight

Your waves of pleasure crashed against mine
and we soared.

You spread your legs and flew.

Young Love

Who longs for days long past
when strange hearts felt their way
in pitch darkness for each other?
And awkward silence tantalized
and jokes veered into explanations
before humor was identified,
and highstrung anxiety prevailed
for sheer zeal to impress,
and onlooking sceptics who
at the time sounded right,
and touch rescued the dumbstruck
sparing language the expenditure.
How did we even survive?

Dry Statement of Intent

I do solemnly but unapologetically
desire perpetual and unrestricted
exclusive guardianship
of the key to your fertility
with appertaining privileges and status
and reciprocal obligations.

Our Mutual Deception

The distance between us is a crutch
a convenient excuse
something we can blame
for our vacuous inner life
for our ominous silences
for our unrewarding reunions
necessarily brief

Ever we remain apart
aware in our secret depths
that true oneness is impossible
even without the outwardly resented
constantly decried
(though jealously cherished)
long distance between us
Our only link

Distance

Supersonic my thoughts fly to you
Paying no heed to the vast expanse
That presumes to part us

Defiant our hearts seal the breach
inflicted by solitude's affront
Beseiged by brutal loneliness

Inelastic however my arms remain
Which fain would match the feats
mastered by flights of fancy

Oh for arms as long as the law!

All the Pimps

A pimp merchandizes the bodies of whores. Beatings and insults maintain the necessary inferiority complex that keeps her beholden to him. Lies and mindgames keep her in awe of him, and even more fearful of leaving him, because how will she survive these streets without him? Never mind that she actually feeds them both, the fact that he takes all her money and gives her a fraction of it leaves her thinking she needs him. The occasional drug fix instils dependency through a soul-destroying addiction which only the pimp can supply. At the end of her beauty and usefulness, when she is worn down by daily rough usage at the hands of the tricks whose money she takes and hands over to the pimp, and when the drugs have reduced her brains to porridge, she is discarded by the pimp if she is lucky enough not to have already died on the job or at his hands.

Capitalism pimps out the minds of people. We work to sustain an economic system which exists to exploit us. The best part of our labor and mental capacity is funnelled into narrow and repetitive  routines which maximize investor profits. For all this sacrifice of our time, our productive lives, hemmed in by austere corporate policies the whole while, we earn salaries in exchange with which we may Go Out And Consume, sustaining the system, hoping against hope to eventually earn that deserved promotion that will perch us high in the stratosphere above the worries of the non-selfactualized masses who will stare wistfully up at us as they hang on our every word, giving us a heady rush of power. But most of us won't get quite that high up the pyramid. So we die on the job, or our productivity declines and we retire; meanwhile the machine on the intake end sucks in another fresh-faced starry-eyed aspirant of the verdant heights.

The pope pimps out souls. Making claim to the souls of men he boasts a monopoly of the keys to heaven and hell, thus all should be found in his good books or else eternal fiery tortures greedily await. Many unhappy with their lot in this life comply with his edicts and enrich his coffers for a stake in eternal felicitude insured by the old white man. Inevitably the pope's customers die, earning their chance to verify his claims to mastery over the spirit world, and to test just how far his dearly purchased Get Out Of Jail Free Card will go in those realms. Just too bad if no route be found by which to return to the land of the living and claim a refund from the self-appointed pimp of the underworld.

Spectre

It was hard to accept that Daddy was dead.

Mum was devastated.

Oh man, we prayed fervently, little brother and I, for GOD to bring him back to life. We were serious.

And then we waited expectantly for him to walk in through the door as usual, with his exuberant booming bass reverberating throughout the house as the carried us aloft in his strong arms and hands that tickled. But no such miracle occurred.

And then one day his car came trundling towards the house. We ran out to meet it, little brother and I, our hearts in our mouths, palms skyward in jubilation, thinking GOD had answered our desperate prayers.

But from within the car emerged one of his former colleagues, newly assigned his company car.

We instantly hated that stranger for not being Daddy, though he came to offer condolences for his loss.

Even little sister, at the time a blissfully ignorant, inarticulate toddler, eventually caught on to the extended absence of a strong, familiar presence. She then cried for days.

The years passed and reality sank inescapably,  the hard reality of his continued absence, the oppressive expectation that we would never see him again. The best we could hope for was to eventually come to terms with that Daddy-shaped gap that would never be filled.

To this day his ghost in my dreams is cause for rejoicing. I eagerly pursue it with urgent questions demanding answers, half glad to be reunited at last, though it evades me studiously. Usually people run from ghosts, but this is one ghost I have never forgiven for having the guts to die on me.

Of course I should know better. It was not his fault.

Goodbye Daddy.

friends

Many people, everywhere,
on the prowl for hugs and handshakes.
Small-talk conveyor belts
compelled to supply you.
Some vague restriction
prevents a mutual reckoning
honest and terminal.
A weighty obligation
to sustain cordiality
animates synthetic smiles all around.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.

Essentially Beautiful

You add to good looks a clean heart.
It shines through, you can't help it.
You are beautiful inside.

Your mind is a verdant pasture
Fruitful and calm
Your spirit refreshes like water
Pleasant company
You are positive and radiant
Uplifting conversation
The things you say
speech in due season
The way you say things
An absolute delight

Cross the Abyss

In the course of life you suddenly meet
A yawning chasm,
from which no light escapes,
But all things swirl in a turbulent vortex -
a downward spiral to perdition.

None dare whisper a word of warning.
The deafening scream of quiet despair,
a hateful choking stench,
in saying it all, struggles to muffle
the frenetic psychosis accompanying
such irreversible plunges.
Chirpy jingles wanly sound,
morale-boosting work songs proliferate,
sudden outbursts distract the wary,
striped in panic and uncertainty.
Foul decay whitewashed with lies
smiles that do not reach the eyes.

Anyway in the belly of the beast
lamentations are ignored -
Why think about it too hard?
Strive to pass without incident.
Let the headlines trumpet the winners.
Hold steady now, keep your head.

The multitude's grasping ambition rallies
Human nature supplies momentum.
We dive headlong into its black heart,
Anxious to make it or die en route.

A cold indifferent roar greets us
an icy blast of contempt and hate
belched from our downward destination
concealed by indiscernible darkness.

Yet we unfazed in pursuit of Happiness
will know her when we find her,
for whom with zeal we lend our arms to the oar
and our backs to the whip...

Stop.
Look above, think beyond,
Make your ardous journey
to that land of answers
across, not inside, the abyss.