Chapter 85 - The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)


LXXXV

Conquest is not about morality.
It is gang warfare, home invasion, rape,
In the thin guise of flag-waving national pretense.

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Specialization, deep and broad as it may seem
Is often equally shallow and narrow in its scope.

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Think of all the actors
You have grown up with.
Just think how many people
Do not even imagine you exist.

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The innocence of youth,
What a time it was, it was.

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By the nature of bottom-line reasoning,
The world as it has been cannot long stand
To the insatiable appetite of corporate avarice.

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Get over it.

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Every prison has its comfort zone.

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What is the awareness but the oneness
Conscious of its countless divisions.

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A voice for the times.

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Aloneness need not be considered alienation.

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Whose version of common sense?

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You are the light in the infinity of eternity.

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God does not exist outside you
As anything but a concept.

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All history is relative
To the eye of the beholder.

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It doesn’t quite work to whine
If you place yourself in harm’s way
And harm comes.

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Sometimes you get put on a holding pattern
Until someone else’s course comes into alignment
And a two-step later you’re underway again.

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Only in complete detachment are you real.

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It is all contrived.

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The sanctity of the temple within
Is the simple, pure austerity
Of its infinite silence.

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How often the oppressed
Oppress their oppressors.

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Does revenge solve the problem?
Or merely appease the fragmentation?

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No matter how you cloak it,
The body is a pretty disgusting fact.

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You do your best simply because that is your nature.

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Without the attributes, the awareness lingers, alone.

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Sometimes its pretty darn scary
What delusion will get you into.

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So many things you are not.
So many things you are.

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Perhaps you really do care.
Perhaps you only pretend to.
Do you even know your mind?

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How interesting that arbitrary measurement systems
Should so closely align with our free-willed fate.

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A calm surface belies the untamed content beneath.

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Some choose to remember, some to forget.

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What you gonna do that day
You can’t make the change?

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The young are very supple.
And innocence easily  stolen.

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There is killing for survival,
And killing for pleasure.
Discern the difference.

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The future is for those who have laid stakes in it,
Those who have thrown the dice of genetic lottery.

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The same one which creates
Is the same one which destroys.

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The motive for striving is that life
Could be far harsher if you do not.

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Imagine all the eyes you will,
It would be but a snowflake
To the mountain out there.

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A vision oft told but rarely heard.

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In a world founded upon greed,
The greediest dominate the board.

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Funny how insanity manages
To twist anything around
To appear sane.

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Humanity came to a point
Where it vainly believed
It could redesign the game,
Never visualizing the misfortune
It was passing on to its descendants.

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The thirst for false security is strong.

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To the degree your restless vanity allows,
Always explore new ways to see anything.

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Life is an experiment which goes nowhere.

* * * *
Statistics encompasses all absolutes.

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How will death come?  Will it be fast or slow?
Will you ease through the last of your dream?
Or will you be audience to your own screams?

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Life begins pathless but trails quickly shape
Into ruts, gullies and eventually canyons,
The rigidity of stale well-worn minds.

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In the pain all endure,
Some hate, others feel.

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A meaty theater.

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How much your given sexuality
Plays a force in your imagination.

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Twisted souls wrestle reality with their vanity.

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How surreal to realize the entire identity
Is founded upon a coordinated array
Of atomic, electrical, chemical,
Biological, physiological
Often vain impulses.

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We certainly enjoy our mysteries.

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We invented the concept of god,
And so many have paid the price.

* * * *
A grand theater with mixed reviews.

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Another untouchable abode-museum,
An aesthetic mausoleum devoid of life.

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Some just don’t see the train coming.

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Fulfilling one’s destiny takes a little effort.

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You can get wary about who you’re going
To wake up with the next morning.

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You’re an independent.

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You can be sure you are not alone
Amidst so many wretched souls.

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Or is it visa-versa?

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Pure reason is a most subtle delusion.

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We are all assured the same end in so many ways.

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Passion can bring storms down on many houses.

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Change is the only thing you can depend on.

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What an inept logic that a sexual encounter
Should somehow become a forever-after.

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Without even one grain of sand,
The entire universe would not be.

* * * *
You learn what it occurs to you to know.

* * * *
Life erodes us all.

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You’re so vain.
I’ll just bet you think
This song is about you.
Don’t you!  Don’t you!

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Peace is undifferentiated, unfragmented, undivided.

* * * *
Creation and destruction are the same motion.

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Through the confines of any limitation,
You will never be secure.

* * * *
Fiasco!

* * * *
The unity of form is unseen.

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Imagination’s misinterpretation of data
Is the root of all dualistic notion.

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The shallowness of a diamond says it all.

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Not having any followers (i.e., groupies)
Frees you from the potential web
Of political correctness

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What amusing things words are.

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All distinctions are born of fragmented thinking.

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Scientists are just bean counters in white coats.

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The trouble with having so much history,
So much arbitrary knowledge, tradition and ritual
Is all the splintering born of comparison and repetition.
What is new to you is nothing to the sun.

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Whereth goeth the pride beforeth the falleth?

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Turn inside out and outside in.

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Inhale slowly, exhale slowly, pay attention.

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God forbid you ever need to walk on water or get resurrected

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Such sweet thoughts this mind sometimes has.
The savage heart near bursts at the dream of you.
You are the gold’s gold well worth cherishing.

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How soft can you afford to be?

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Seeds die.

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More paradox for those who ponder such things.

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Better for the peaceful warriors
To carry the means of destruction
In anonymous, unpretentious fashion,
That opponents are none the wiser
Should tempest come to play.

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What begins voluntarily often turns compulsory.
And visa-versa.

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Veils take every form.
The sage ventures the theater
In whatever way the spectacle unfolds.
Unattached to vain outcomes, s/he
Walks the tightrope effortlessly.

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Wisdom is the hard-won fruit of life’s harvest.

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How can the maker ever sleep with so many eyes?

* * * *
These worlds are a call to a paradigm revolution.

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How can you ever really help someone
Who won’t help themselves?

* * * *
Here today, gone tomorrow.

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Feel the mind and body as energy prior to form.

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So many immense mansions,
So many chambers so full of things,
So empty of life, all for the vanity of excess.

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What excesses will be witnessed before it is over?

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Feel the mind and body as the energy prior to form.

* * * *
What room can an expert have for change?

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You assert it to be “your” soul
As if you more than inhabit it temporarily
As if spirit can somehow be possessed separately

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How much destruction
Can the human species wreak
Before its home becomes uninhabitable?
Survival dictates conformity to the limits of context.

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Madness?  By what accounting?

* * * *
We seem bound to create every concept imaginable.
Consciousness is each universe unto its Self.

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It is a maze into which all journey, some home.

* * * *
Home is wherever, whenever, however you wake up.
The only question is, how often do you choose to awaken?

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Someone can tell you something
Until s/he is blue in the face,
But you cannot hear it
Till you are ready.

* * * *
What courage it takes to face one’s death,
Even greater courage to take one’s life.

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What a conspiracy god is.

* * * *
What is your last temptation?

* * * *
Take responsibility or die.


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The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved