A Father's Perspective

When W.B. Yeats looked at a darkened, cloudy sky he described his vision as a "sky filled with fists of filthy, dark, congealed fat."

When a cosmic-cowboy poet looked at a similar sky, he wrote: "the sky was like the colors of sparrows: a thousands different colors of gray."

They were both right and they were both wrong

Immanuel Kant explained our perception of truth as "Phenomena" or an "impossible truth" with reality filtered through our respective and unique vision compounded by how we feel.

It is "real" and it is an illusion simultaneously and reliably understood without prediction or even reason.

I wrote the set of lines below 30 years ago and I've never kept a copy; however, I've re-written the pile of words at least four times for a variety of reasons and the words are always different and the same, and how I remember, but I really don't. The words are just words. The thoughts are a chant, a drone, an echo, and a sound like a whoosh, a scream, a whisper...

Death and senseless violence make our world shudder and spin and that same violence casts a vague light that reflects and changes and hurts to look at.

Infinite Regress……….
The boys are standing
They are facing a wall.
The boys are standing and facing a wall.
The boys are wearing pink bow ties…

The boys in pink bowties are standing and staring at a wall.
They are staring at a wall full of boys in pink bow ties that are staring at a wall.
They are staring at a wall full of boys in pink bow ties.

The boys in pink bow ties are laughing as they stare at a wall full of boys in pink bow ties…
Laughing.

They smile as they stare at a wall filled with boys in pink bow ties
staring at a wall filled with boys
smiling at a wall
filled with boys
smiling
at a wall
filled with boys
smiling
as their mouths are torn and bloodied by their own snarling teeth and gnashing gums that are forcing hideous smiles to ripple their blood stained chins as the drips of dark thick blood fall on their bow ties that are tied tightly beneath their chins and around their choking necks as they stare with dry eyes…

at a wall
full of boys
in pink bow ties
that are staring at a wall full
of boys
in pink bow ties
that silently scream and smile and gasp for air as the bricks fall and the sky becomes light and dark as clouds speed to somewhere where those same boys are laughing and staring at a wall filled with boys with pink bow ties laughing at a wall filled with your face, your mirror, your light, your soul, your compassion, your face.

There is a delivery: it is a box filled with pink bow ties.
Someone will need to hand them out and tie them tightly with love and care.

Big Poppa wrote this post after the VT massacre. He is about to send his first-born off to college...