Rats Everywhere Quotes

Is anyone anywhere happy? No, not unless they are living in a dream or in an artifice that they or someone else has made. For a time I was lulled in the arms of a blind organism with breasts full of champagne and nipples made of caviar. I thought she was true, and that the true was the beautiful. But the true is the ugly mixed up everywhere, like a peck of dirt scattered through your life. The true is that there is no security, no artifice to stop the unsavory changes, the rat race, the death unwish - the winged chariot, the horns and the motors, the Devil in the clock. Love is a desperate artifice to take the place of those two original parents who turned out not to be omnisciently right gods, but a rather pedestrian pair of muddled suburbanites who, no matter how bumbling they tried, never could quite understand how or why you grew up to your 21st birthday.

I'm staying right here," grumbled the rat. "I haven't the slightest interest in fairs." "That's because you've never been to one," remarked the old sheep . "A fair is a rat's paradise. Everybody spills food at a fair. A rat can creep out late at night and have a feast. In the horse barn you will find oats that the trotters and pacers have spilled. In the trampled grass of the infield you will find old discarded lunch boxes containing the foul remains of peanut butter sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, cracker crumbs, bits of doughnuts, and particles of cheese. In the hard-packed dirt of the midway, after the glaring lights are out and the people have gone home to bed, you will find a veritable treasure of popcorn fragments, frozen custard dribblings, candied apples abandoned by tired children, sugar fluff crystals, salted almonds, popsicles,partially gnawed ice cream cones,and the wooden sticks of lollypops. Everywhere is loot for a rat--in tents, in booths, in hay lofts--why, a fair has enough disgusting leftover food to satisfy a whole army of rats." Templeton's eyes were blazing. " Is this true?" he asked. "Is this appetizing yarn of yours true? I like high living, and what you say tempts me." "It is true," said the old sheep. "Go to the Fair Templeton. You will find that the conditions at a fair will surpass your wildest dreams. Buckets with sour mash sticking to them, tin cans containing particles of tuna fish, greasy bags stuffed with rotten..." "That's enough!" cried Templeton. "Don't tell me anymore I'm going!

Have you ever killed something bigger than a bug? Once I killed a pigeon. I love animals, but pigeons are not animals—they’re not even birds. They are like rats with wings, flying cockroaches. Spreading germs, shitting everywhere, making noises that fucking piss me off.

After setting up the solar panels today, I went for a little walk. I never left sight of the rover; the last thing I want to do is get lost on foot. But I couldn’t stomach crawling back into that cramped, smelly rat’s nest. Not right away. It’s a strange feeling. Everywhere I go, I’m the first. Step outside the rover? First guy ever to be there! Climb a hill? First guy to climb that hill! Kick a rock? That rock hadn’t moved in a million years!

Nothing endures for so long as fear. Everywhere in nature one sees evidence of innate releasing mechanisms literally millions of years old, which have lain dormant through thousands of generations but retained their power undiminished. The field-rat’s inherited image of the hawk’s silhouette is the classic example—even a paper silhouette drawn across a cage sends it rushing frantically for cover. And how else can you explain the universal but completely groundless loathing of the spider, only one species of which has ever been known to sting? Or the equally surprising—in view of their comparative rarity—hatred of snakes and reptiles? Simply because we all carry within us a submerged memory of the time when the giant spiders were lethal, and when the reptiles were the planet’s dominant life form.

It was a relief to see his father, who'd always been an unfailing source of reassurance and comfort. They clasped hands in a firm shake, and used their free arms to pull close for a moment. Such demonstrations of affection weren't common among fathers and sons of their rank, but then, they'd never been a conventional family. After a few hearty thumps on the back, Sebastian drew back and glanced over him with the attentive concern that hearkened to Gabriel's earliest memories. Not missing the traces of weariness on his face, his father lightly tousled his hair the way he had when he was a boy. "You haven't been sleeping." "I went carousing with friends for most of last night," Gabriel admitted. "It ended when we were all too drunk to see a hole through a ladder." Sebastian grinned and removed his coat, tossing the exquisitely tailored garment to a nearby chair. "Reveling in the waning days of bachelorhood, are we?" "It would be more accurate to say I'm thrashing like a drowning rat." "Same thing." Sebastian unfastened his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. An active life at Heron's Point, the family estate in Sussex, had kept him as fit and limber as a man half his age. Frequent exposure to the sunlight had gilded his hair and darkened his complexion, making his pale blue eyes startling in their brightness. While other men of his generation had become staid and settled, the duke was more vigorous than ever, in part because his youngest son was still only eleven. The duchess, Evie, had conceived unexpectedly long after she had assumed her childbearing years were past. As a result there were eight years between the baby's birth and that of the next oldest sibling, Seraphina. Evie had been more than a little embarrassed to find herself with child at her age, especially in the face of her husband's teasing claims that she was a walking advertisement of his potency. And indeed, there have been a hint of extra swagger in Sebastian's step all through his wife's last pregnancy. Their fifth child was a handsome boy with hair the deep auburn red of an Irish setter. He'd been christened Michael Ivo, but somehow the pugnacious middle name suited him more than his given name. Now a lively, cheerful lad, Ivo accompanied his father nearly everywhere.

The more south we were, the more deep a sky it seemed, till, in the Valley of Mexico, I thought it held back an element too strong for life, and that the flamy brilliance of blue stood off this menace and sometimes, like a sheath or silk membrane, shoed the weight it held in sags. So when later he would fly high over the old craters on the plain, coaly bubbles of the underworld, dangerous red everywhere from the sun, and then coats of snow on the peak of the cones—gliding like a Satan—well, it was here the old priests, before the Spaniards, waited for Aldebaran to come into the middle of heaven to tell them whether or not life would go on for another cycle, and when they received their astronomical sign built their new fire inside the split and emptied chest of a human sacrifice. And also, hereabouts, worshipers disguised as gods and as gods in the disguise of birds, jumped from platforms fixed on long poles, and glided as they spun by the ropes—feathered serpents, and eagles too, the voladores, or fliers. There still are such plummeters, in market places, as there seem to be remnants or conversions or equivalents of all the old things. Instead of racks or pyramids of skulls still in their hair and raining down scraps of flesh there are corpses of dogs, rats, horses, asses, by the roads; the bones dug out of the rented graves are thrown on a pile when the lease is up; and there are the coffins looking like such a rough joke on the female form, sold in the open shops, black, white, gray, and in all sizes, with their heavy death fringes daubed in Sapolio silver on the black. Beggars in dog voices on the church steps enact the last feebleness for you with ancient Church Spanish, and show their old flails of stump and their sores. The burden carriers with the long lines, hemp lines they wind over their foreheads to hold the loads on their backs, lie in the garbage at siesta and give themselves the same exhibited neglect the dead are shown. Which is all to emphasize how openly death is received everywhere, in the beauty of the place, and how it is acknowledged that anyone may be roughly handled—the proudest—pinched, slapped, and set down, thrown down; for death throws even worse in men’s faces and makes it horrible and absurd that one never touched should be roughly dumped under, dumped upon.

It goes something like this. You'’re walking along minding your own business, or you'’re on the underground or you’'re on a bus or something, but generally you’'re not paying much attention. And suddenly you look around and see all these other people and think, ‘Hey, they can look at me and see me and I can see in my mind what I think they see, and when I’'m gone they’'re going to keep on walking and they’r'e going to go and live their lives, and their thoughts are going to be just like mine, but different, but real and solid and alive and full of feeling and confusion and colour just like life, and, hey, isn’t that cool!’ And it is. And roughly around this time you'’re going to notice that you can feel trains under your feet or pipes bubbling, and you can hear the sound of traffic and voices and stuff; and then you’'ll probably look up at the things around you and think, ‘Those buildings with the lights on look almost alive, like giant trees lit up with their own constellation of stars in every window,’ or maybe not if you'’re underground; and you’'ll realise that you can see the city all around, and it’'s so full of lives and life, and they'’re all buzzing around you, and every single individual is real and alive and passionate and full of mystery, and it'’s not just Joe Bloggs walking by who’'s like this, but that every part of the city is crawling with life. And you'’ll think, ‘Hey, that'’s pretty damn sweet, everywhere I look there'’s life,’ and roughly around that point you'’ll realise you can hear rats and pigeons and thoughts and spells and colours and electricity, and that’'s probably when you started going a bit mad.

Hope, though; now there’s a real pest. Hope doesn’t just nibble your cheese and chew holes in your skirting boards. Hope keeps you plodding on when it really is time to call it quits. Hope drags you to sixteen auditions in a single day, when there’s a nice job in your brother-in-law’s tannery just waiting for you. Hope keeps you going in Old Stairs or Paradise, even though there’s no money and nothing to eat and the landlord just took your chair and your chamber pot. Personally, I can see no great merit in simply being alive if you’re miserable and in pain, but Hope won’t let you go. She’s a tease, like bad children teasing a dumb animal, and I’ve made a point of avoiding her whenever I can. Still, sometimes she runs you down and there’s nowhere left for you to go. You can turn and fight her and lose, or let her scoop you up and turn your brain to mush. Hope against hope. We had human chains shifting those blocks with levers and rollers, through the narrow alleys where carts couldn’t go. We had shifts digging the ditch by lamplight, in the rain. And in every working party there was at least one man who cheerfully announced that it wasn’t going to work, the whole idea was stupid, the enemy’ll find a way round this in two shakes, just you see; and even he didn’t really believe it, because of Hope. Hope turns a hundred men and women ripping the skin off their hands on a coarse hemp rope into a street party. Someone tells a joke, or clowns around, or starts singing a favourite song from one of the shows, and Hope bursts through, like sappers, and next thing you know she’s everywhere, like smoke, or floodwater, or rats. We’re going to beat Ogus, she whispers in every ear, and this time it’ll be different.

Not to hurt feelings but that chapter you assigned? That was all “Columbus is great,” “The Indians sure loved Thanksgiving,” “Let’s brainwash everyone.” I found way better stuff at the library, for example did you know before leaving England to pick up the tobacco the slaves grew, the Englishers filled their empty ships with mud so they didn’t tip in storms? When they got to the New World (which was not new or called America, the America name came from a pickle seller guy who got famous because he lied about doing sex with natives) the Englishers dumped their mud on shore to make room for the tobacco. Guess what was in that mud? Earthworms. But earthworms had been extinct in America since the ice ages, like 10,000 years at least, so the English worms went EVERYwhere and changed the soils and the Englishers also brought other things this place had NEVER known such as: silkworms pigs dandelions grapevines goats rats measles

Then it was time for dessert: another plate, full of big, white larvas from the palm nut tree. And I do mean big—each one was longer and thicker than my thumb, and had been lightly fried in its own fat. But I wondered, had they been too lightly fried? Because they seemed to be moving. The villagers were proud to offer us such a delicious treat. Remember, I am a sword swallower. I should be able to push anything down my throat. And I am not usually a fussy eater: I had even once eaten porridge made from mosquitos. But no. This, I couldn’t do. The heads of the larvas looked like little brown nuts and their thick bodies like transparent wrinkled marshmallows, through which I could see their intestines. The villagers gestured that I should bite them in two and suck out the insides. If I tried I would puke the rat back up. I did not want to offend. Suddenly, an idea. I smiled softly and said regretfully, “You know what, I am sorry, but I can’t eat larvas.” Thorkild turned to me, surprised. He already had a couple of larvas hanging out of the corners of his mouth. He really loved those larvas. He had previously worked as a missionary in Congo, where they had been the highlight of every week for one whole year. “You see, we don’t eat larvas,” I said, trying to look convincing. The villagers looked at Thorkild. “But he eats them?” they asked. Thorkild stared at me. “Ah,” I said. “You see, he comes from a different tribe. I come from Sweden, he comes from Denmark. In Denmark, they love eating larvas. But in Sweden it’s against our culture.” The village teacher went and got out the world map and I pointed out the water separating our two countries. “On this side of the water they eat larvas,” I said, “and on this side we don’t.” It’s actually one of the most blatant lies I have ever told, but it worked. The villagers were happy to share my dessert between them. Everyone, everywhere knows that people from different tribes have different customs.

The only thing I can say is that I felt as though a veil of thick cloth had been lifted away from me as I opened my eyes again—and not only from my eyes, but from all of my senses. I could abruptly smell the mud and fish odor of the lake, the trees around the house, the fresh scent of the coming rain preceding the storm on the smoke-stained wind. I looked at the trees. Saw them, not just in the first green coat of spring, but in the full bloom of summer, the splendor of the fall, and the barren desolation of winter, all at the same time. I Saw the house, and each separate part of it as its own component, the timbers as parts of spectral trees, the windows as pieces of distant sandy shores. I could feel the heat of summer and the cold of winter in the wind coming off the lake. I Saw the house wreathed in ghostly flames, and knew that those were part of its possible future, that fire lay down several of the many paths of possibility that lay ahead in the next hour. The house itself was a place of power. Dark emotions—greed, lust, hatred—all hung over it as visible things, molds and slimes that were strewn over it like Spanish moss with malevolent eyes. Ghostly things, restless spirits, moved around the place, drawn to the sense of fear, despair, and anger that hung over it, mindless shades that were always to be found in such places, like rats in granaries. The other thing that I Saw over the house was a grinning, empty skull. Skulls were everywhere, wherever I looked, just at the edge of my vision, silent and still and bleach white, as solid and real as though a fetishist had scattered them around in anticipation of some bizarre holiday. Death. Death lay in the house’s future, tangible, solid, unavoidable.

New York City in the late afternoon, shining in the sunlight. It did my heart good to see it again, its jolies-laides streets both generous and mean, so much talent in the air, so many rats underfoot, its people striding forth in summer shorts, its parks brightened by young girls in flower, its rusting metal bridges, its pinnacles, its terrible road surfaces, its everything-at-once-ness, its inexhaustible abundance, its crowded excess, and construction sites and music everywhere. Home.

New York City in the late afternoon, shining in the sunlight. It did my heart good to see it again, its jolies-laides streets both generous and mean, so much talent in the air, so many rats underfoot, its people striding forth in summer shorts, its parks brightened by young girls in flower, its rusting metal bridges, its pinnacles, its terrible road surfaces, its everything-at-once-ness, its inexhaustible abundance, its crowded excess, and construction sites and music everywhere. Home. As the ambulette moved through Manhattan

Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative.

There is a story about a man who came to town during the plagues that were killing so many at the time. The rats were the problem and while people did not know this in a scientific way like they do now, it was their intuition that told them that the rats were bringing the disease. He claimed that he knew how to get rid of the rats, but most of all how to get rid of the fevers and the disease that were decimating the countryside. The town had to give him one hundred and thirty of their children for him to take back to his home in Transylvania. The population there were so few that it was becoming almost impossible to marry outside of family. The inbreeding was causing disease in the bloodlines --- primarily mental disease. So he promised to free the city of rats, and hence plague, in exchange for these children. He promised they would be healthy for much longer than any normal children in plague-ridden cities could hope for. The people were so desperate they agreed to the man’s request and within a fortnight the town was the only place for miles around which was miraculously free of rats. Soon the town was also unburdened of the former pestilence. When he came to collect his pay in the form of seventy girls and sixty boys under the age of ten, the town refused. They hung him in the town square, fearful of allowing him to leave in case he would rain the black plague down upon them. The people knew that he was a powerful sorcerer of some type and condemned him to death rather than hand their children over to him.             “It wasn’t until the following spring that people began to see the familiar form of the strange man on the roads leading out of town. He was said to be alive and playing a musical instrument that made people feel dizzy or hypnotized. Soon there was a panic. The woods, still devoid of all rats, were searched for the presumed dead traveler. Nothing was found. Then on the Ides of March, in the middle of the night, one hundred and thirty children disappeared from their beds. The adults spoke of an odd feeling that came over them, accompanied by the faint sound of music on the wind. It had put them to sleep and when they awoke all that was left of their children was a pile of bloody teeth resting on their pillows. The parents searched everywhere, pulling their hair and wailing their mournful cries, but the children had vanished. There are stories that these were the first vampire children who later populated the Carpathians, brought from Hamlin by a dark conjurer. Whatever happened in reality, the song was passed down for hundreds of years as a warning not to make deals that you know you will not uphold. It could be a deal with the devil, and he always gets his due.

This rat race does not just take place at Stanford or in Silicon Valley. It’s everywhere. Whether you’re a web designer, teacher, firefighter, or army officer, you are encouraged to keep checking things off the to-do list, amassing accomplishments, and focusing your efforts on the future. There’s always something more you can do to further yourself at work: an extra project or responsibility you can take on, more schooling you can complete to ensure a promotion, or an additional investment to wager on just in case! There’s always that co-worker who is putting in longer hours, showing you that you too can and should do more. And so you strive nonstop to exceed your goals, constantly playing catch-up with your ambitious to-do list.

You'll know it's love when the wrinkles resting at the ends of his eyes become your favorite feature. When “good morning” is shared with the rats of the street and people become flowers and the earth is gold. And you create your own clouds to walk upon and everywhere you look is painted with possibility. You'll know it's love when you see nothing and everything and it all looks the same; And it all looks like him.

It was from him that I learnt of the modern-day Fagins of Italy, and how the more innocent Gypsies fell into their nets. (…) Instead of Germany, after a long journey in a van, they found themselves in the city of Salerno in southern Italy. There they were brought by their 'Boss' to the empty shell of an unfinished apartment block. Inside there were hundreds of Romanian beggars sleeping on rags and mattresses which had been salvaged from rubbish dumps. There were rats everywhere. (…) The next morning they were pushed out on to the streets to beg. Romi was in tears. But in his tearful state he earned good money, especially outside the churches. He pocketed over a hundred euros on the first day and in the evening he tried to conceal some of it from the 'Boss'.He was told to strip. They found the money and beat him. They beat Dumitru as well because he had earned only ten euros. (p. 286)

While Leonardo lived in Milan, a terrible disease spread through the city, killing thousands of people. Its victims got black spots all over their bodies before they died. People named the disease the black death. Today we call it the bubonic plague. At one time, the plague wiped out about a third of the people in Europe. In Renaissance cities like Milan, sewage ran in the streets. Rats and their fleas were everywhere. Infected fleas bit people and infected them as well. In Italy in the 1600s, doctors wore beaked masks stuffed with herbs they thought would protect them from the plague. We’re not sure if the masks were used in Leonardo’s time. Leonardo knew that Milan was not healthy. So he planned a special city, where people could live better and cleaner lives.

Say what you would about the pandemic, at least it had helped slow down the rat race. It had also got people thinking more about the world to come. In communities like Salvation City, life had become simpler and more purpose-driven. People were sticking closer to home, spending more time with their families. And everywhere church attendance had soared.

Entering the city of Monrovia on Tubman Boulevard, the road suddenly became paved and a little smoother. Most of the other streets were made of sand and coated with used crankcase oil, making them extremely slick. I couldn’t believe the huge water-filled potholes everywhere; couldn’t they fill them in? A major problem was that there was no way of knowing how deep the holes were since they were full of water…. Jimmy had his hands full bouncing along in a car that didn’t seem to have shocks, and from the looks of the tires I don’t believe the front wheels had ever been aligned. Some of the streets went from being a rutted, muddy mess, to being exposed bed-rock with shale stone filling in the worst holes. Somehow Jimmy skillfully navigated these streets, at what I considered at the time, as being reckless speeds. We passed simple dwellings pieced together from flotsam, debris, and recycled planks or pieces of plywood, including what appeared to be random soft drink signs and the likes. It reminded me of some of the Mexican border towns I had been to. There were mangy dogs picking through the piles of garbage, without much hope of finding anything edible. The raw garbage, scattered on the streets, had obviously been picked through already by people or other feral beasts trying to live off the land. If the dogs and cats left anything behind, I could only imagine the rats getting it!

While you sleep, you are oppressed by dark meandering dreams. They’re characterized by an oppressive feeling of endless overcast shadow. The world is encased in dim blue darkness, and white ash is drifting everywhere. You find yourself in an abandoned tennis court that has gone to seed. The birds have stopped singing, the robins have disappeared and you become one of only thousands of people left. More than half of humanity has died of disease, pestilence, and military genocide. Fat golden rats scurry here and there among severed heads lying all around the tennis court in varying stages of putrid decay. As you walk out of the exit, you see piles of dead soldiers in rotting heaps, victims of mass poisoning by rebel civilians smart enough to fool them with Kool Aid on a hot day. Men, women and children lie everywhere, their empty bodies’ ravaged, their desiccated purple tongues, stick limbs and empty eye sockets all that’s left of them. They were the fortunate ones, shot through the head, the illiterate civilians whose organs were harvested for the criminal elite. The elite live high up in the hills with their armed guards inside abandoned mansions with no electricity or running water. Harvested as replacement organs for the sick or as dinner for those who used to enjoy beef liver, the elite are the only ones with handguns and rifles and everyone else is at their mercy hiding in the abandoned buildings all through downtown and the industrial area of NW Portland.

What is the Ultimate Goal of Life? If we look around, different people have different goals. Some people just want to be rich, others crave for power, and still others seek contentment and fulfillment. If we look deeper, people pursue different things to ultimately get to Destination Happiness. 80% of the world is trying to climb the first peak of Achievement, while the rest are trying to go further towards the second peak of Fulfillment. The achiever may want to excel in sports, politics or business, amongst the various other fields that are mushrooming in the world today. The ones who are content and fulfilled are trying to escape the rat race. For them, happiness doesn’t come from achieving more, but rather from desiring less. The former, who climb the first peak of happiness, depend on pleasure to achieve happiness, while the latter believe that peace is the foundation of happiness. 99% of humanity falls under these two categories. Does it mean that the remaining 1% doesn’t seek happiness? Of course not! Everybody alive on earth seeks happiness. The 1% whose happiness doesn’t depend on pleasure from achievement or peace from fulfillment seek happiness that comes from finding the true purpose of life. This tiny minority goes on a Quest, on a Search, but ultimately, even they want happiness. Everyone seeks Happiness! Therefore, what is wrong in saying that the goal of humanity is happiness? There is nothing wrong, except that ultimate happiness is neither on the first peak of Achievement, nor on the second peak of Fulfillment. We are, unfortunately, looking for it in the wrong place. We are like the musk deer that searches for the musk everywhere, not realizing that the musk it is looking for is inside its own navel. We also do not realize that happiness is within us. We are the very happiness that we are seeking! While 1% of humanity goes on a Quest, a Search within, trying to find a purpose, and realize the truth, all are not fortunate enough to find this purpose and meaning. A very small fraction of the seekers attain self-realization. They realize that they are neither the body that will die, nor the mind that doesn’t exist. They ultimately realize that they are the Divine Energy or Consciousness that gives them life. The Ultimate Happiness! While this realization leads to liberation, it inadvertently gives ultimate joy, peace and bliss. It frees the realized ones from the prisons of misery and sorrow as they escape from the darkness of the ignorance they live in. Probably, less than 0.00001% of humanity attains self-realization and ultimate, eternal, everlasting joy, bliss, peace and happiness with it. These fortunate souls escape from the cycle of death and rebirth. They are liberated from the body and the myth that they are the mind that is reborn based on their past actions. This realization is the ultimate goal of life which is also called Moksha, Nirvana, Enlightenment or Salvation. Whatever you may call it, the goal of life is liberation from misery and suffering. And this is possible only if we realize the truth. We should realize we are not the body that suffers and dies. We should realize that we are not the mind that has to be reborn again and again. We are energy – the energy that gives Consciousness to the body and mind while it experiences life on earth. This is self-realization. The ultimate goal is self-realization because realization of the truth liberates us from the prisons of misery and sorrow that are experienced being the ego, mind and body, which we are not.

Science used to claim it understood the universe fairly well. Now it says that 95% of the universe is unknown to science. Anyone who scored 5% in a science exam would not be allowed to do science. Yet worshippers of scientism believe they are permitted to pontificate on the nature of reality despite being a 95% epic fail. They literally don’t know anything. Even their 5% of supposed knowledge is absurd since the remaining 95% is exceptionally unlikely to offer a defense of the 5%. Science – the Swiss Cheese System. It’s full of holes. It’s springing leaks everywhere. The rats are jumping off the sinking ship.

Why Poetry Can Be Hard for Most People Dorothea Lasky, 1978 Because speaking to the dead is not something you want to do When you have other things to do in your day Like take out the trash or use the vacuum In the edge between the stove and cupboard Because the rat is everywhere Crawling around Or more so walking And it doesn’t even notice you It has its own intentions And is searching for that perfect bag of potato chips like you once were Because life is no more important than eating Or fucking Or talking someone into fucking Or talking someone into something Or sleeping calmly and soundly And all you can hope for are the people who put that calm in you Or let you go into it with dignity Because poetry reminds you That there is no dignity In living You just muddle through and for what Jack Jack you wrote to him You wrote to all of us I wasn’t even born You wrote to me A ball of red and green shifting sparks In my parents’ eye You wrote to me and I just listened I listened I listened I tell you And I came back No Poetry is hard for most people Because of sound

How free am I? Don’t I skulk like a rat through trainyards? Don’t I doze in boxcars with my boots on and without a sleeping bag, so that I can disappear more quickly when emergency strikes? Don’t I long for my train to move? How I love shadow-shows! Particularly beguiling is the way that freeway overpasses fill a rushing boxcar’s doorway with silhouetted diagonals. Do I love shadows because I fear the third dimension? Am I a writer and a printmaker in an effort to control my perception of the world by constricting it to my level? And aren’t all these questions, which rush through my mind and depart unanswered, nothing but shadow-shows themselves?

Abingon. I remembered smoke and dust and noise, the siege cannon firing day and night to bring down the great walls. There had been flames everywhere, in the city. Disease was rampant. Wounds got infected and men died screaming in their beds. Supplies were lost or looted, and men starved. Even Cookpot couldn’t produce forage from thin air, but he had caught rats for us to eat rather than see us go hungry. The water was almost always bad, and it wasn’t uncommon to see men fighting with liquid shit running down their legs from their poisoned guts. Abingon, where I had seen men driven so mad by the constant noise of the guns that they didn’t know their own names any more. I remembered a fellow brought before me for confession, dragged between two of the colonel’s bullyboys. He was a man broken with battle shock who had fled the field the day before when he simply couldn’t stand it another second longer. They brought him to me to say his confession, but all he could do was weep. Afterward, they executed him for cowardice. No, there couldn’t be another Abingon. Not here, not now. Not ever.