Labi Siffre - Into The Light

Elliptical

Good folk will go to extraordinary lengths
To resist acknowledging the lengths
To which bad folk will go
While bad folk believe themselves good
As you know
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thee is ‘m portant

having all to do with
dishonesty

and naught to do with
spirituality

religion wins with the application
of vanity
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Optometry? No need

We all see it
it isn’t rocket science
we all of us see it
‘cept for the psychopaths and the psychotics
(proles and party alike)

no, there’s no preventative rent in the fabric
of our seeing; no impediment, no bent beams
of light avoiding our mechanisms of sight
no, there’s no problem at all with our
seeing
which makes that lazy cliché “show don’t tell”
just another avoidance technique
another self-repairing excuse

“show don’t tell” is the heaped bull shit we use
hoping it will impede our view but it don‘t
no matter how much we shovel, no matter how high
and wide the steaming pile -  we can, as always, see.
there is absolutely no difficulty with our seeing.

The fact is - we need to be told
‘cause at least if we’ve been told, we have
no excuse for performing the usual injured
innocence dance, wheedle and whine,
wriggle and squirm in front of the mirror with:
“We didn’t know! We didn’t know!
How could we have known?! After all,
we didn’t tell us”!
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“Quick nurse! The screens!”

It is the passivity in the question
“But, is it art?”
That disgusts me

Much like the notion
“Without God,
Life has no meaning”

Both, stomach turning denials
Of responsibility;
Acceptable

Only to those with no self-
Respect; and an inability
To detect the stench
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freedom of the press

through the twenty first century pen,
keyboard and digitally enhancing lens

only journalists and media moguls
are "private citizens"
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