Boggles, And Cat Envy. Poem by Ian McArthur

(sorry if this is undercooked: just a vague idea I've had, and I want to draw it out into something more linear. It's fresh off of the sizzling neurons, no editing. Please forgive my train of thought... it tends to go careening off the tracks and end up in a terrible inferno of wreckage and burning cargo.)

Juxtaposition,
pride and shame
can both weigh down
and drive one on to make a name

Juxtaposition,
warmth freezing cold
Children playing in the snow
do not care for numbness hold

Old things are new again
and what is new it seems
all come from a familiar trail
What future is in the past?
Or have we passed that future?

'Reason in Madness! '
eyes are distracted easily,
The blind may see how this world goes
feelingly. Or not.

Sins on high
Saints on the ground
Selflessness for some great reward
What is this world, upside down?

Fish that fly above the sea
Birds that flicker beneath
The smallest feed the mighty,
bidden to the smallest

Frog ponds in the sky
Under ocean lakes
Caves visited by elephants
and people do not think? !

The poor are most generous
The rich most fearful to go without
How many cars pass the bag laden mother on the street?
If I am confused, perhaps I don't want to see.

Chaos? Order?
Hah! Mutual, I say.
Commandments broken everyday
theories seem as Law?

Life? Death?
Pass each a cold eye.
Not all truly live,
few never truly die.

Sense? No sense!
Plato! Descartes!
Lend me your distrusting eyes!
Lend me faith in writhing, chaffing mind!

What am I? What are you?
Each other's image?
Only this one call me 'I.'
How many call me 'you? '
By weight or numbers, reason than
aren't 'I' a 'you? ? '

I Wish to be a house cat.

Madness? Not at all.
Perfectly sound.
Really, it stands to reason.

No mental torments,
Warm fur.
Bidden, others feed, care, and clean-up for me
And thinking they're in charge,
I cuddle while laughing secretly.

I am not a cat. Not Yet!
How is it you sit there, reading this,
knowing your sane and secretly all thinking your not
not crumble screaming into sand? !

Crows outside my window in the snow,
play soccer with a ball.
Some part of mine, satisfied in pain, whispers 'Understand.'
'There's more to life than that' I want to cry, this part of me to that!
...I think there is anyway, I hope? I am?

I get so tired. The body sleeps,
the mind doesn't. Playing
a cruel melody with a bow on the piano's strings
something goes 'Wit-Zss! '
At least there, nothing pretends to make sense.
'Go, bid the soldiers shoot.'
Loud enough to wake me,
Quiet enough to let me sleep.

--------

(note 1: Plato and Descartes are philosophers, though nearly 2000 years apart, had common threads of preferring the intellect as superior to the world presented by the senses, ie. Mind over Matter)
(note 2: there really were crows playing with a soccer ball halfway through writing this - I'm certain they were trying to figure out what the neighbour kids thought was so fun about it... Or maybe they were just playing with it for fun as well? Arrghh...)