And So It Goes

6 Poems and an Afterthought by J.C. Embree

1 – SCALES

Go forth and fiddle

With the dated, archaic

Scale that the doctor

Asked as he exhales

Down the neck of your gown

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The waiting room its own petri dish

You did not ask to come here

Not for illness, not for work

But you sacrificed your lunch anyway

To check, perhaps cure what is not there

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The acknowledging of a

New stomach rim,

Cemented purely in trans-fats

And your cigarette love prevailing;

Stings, as if they were mysteries before

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The beaconing glimmer though

Shines harder and further

As you disperse from the building

For you know yourself lucky

To be allowed, to just check

2 – SYMBOLS

A sled caught aflame

In the film’s last moments

Bearing the word where

The picture began

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Two fingers up for peace or

Heavy metal, depending on which two

You know the meaning inherent

The moment they’re raised

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A sign, in a suburban slice

Reading a single syllable

“Yield”

Granting resound, automatic pause

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The knife on the counter, though

May bear duality in reason

All dependent on where it had cut

Just the preceding day

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Circumstances and cause

Dividing those in peace and distraught

The way a flag can

Mean home or hostility

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Whether you feel warmth

Or sheer fret at a sight

One should not choose

A blind eye, a turn of the cheek

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For the peak of chaos

Is symbolic itself, a tip

Of its own iceberg

All downhill from there.

3 – PLANS

Twelve steps of seltzer, five of grief

None of those stepping stones

Will go

According to plan

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The inherently pathetic

Nature of plans

Brings a nihilistic illusion

Of control

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It is, however

Sheer pursuit, cemented

Through attempt, purpose

And ideas

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That will redeem and rectify

The flaws; it will be

Perfect, if not solely in

Its imperfections

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For at a time long unseen

Reflections may vary

But more on outcomes

Then obstacles.

4 – ELEVATIONS

Height;

Dictated by space

Space and gravity

Plays the nerves like a fiddle

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Should you find

Yourself a skeptic

Whether it regard

The misty mountaintop

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Or even the stepladder

Do not concern yourself

For the space, the gravity

Only vaguely relevant

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As is the public opinion

To what you aspire and strive

Is truer, in regards to

The matter at hand

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If you aspire to the mountain

Work to the top, a ledge at a time

If you're okay atop

The stepladder, that's okay too.

5 -- DETAILS

Imagine the Corvette

Sleek and full of shine

It sits before you, it beckons

And so you approach

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But as you circle and sidle

The blessed machinery

The dents, dullness, and cracks

Become blatant and true.

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All is matter, atoms composed

By God or nature

Whichever you like

But remove one

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As thus the collapse

Is underway

The non-abstract should not

Be attacked, penalized, or hurt

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For its genetic makeup

What's out of its control

Sheer wastefulness, such casualties

Mankind's great failure

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Drive the vehicle

Or don't. But should such

Energy be spent on your

Hate, or its destruction?

6 -- FOUNDATIONS

Should I make the incision and

Crack the skull and find the

Pink details, and somehow go

A bit deeper, I'd find not only

Psyche of thought but soul of being

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The psyche erratic, some ideas

Blessings, others a threat

The soul, no matter one's age

Is an infant, incapable of wrong

Truly deserving, the sum of wholesome

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The core fundamentals

Of your personage, collected in a

Sea of abstract zeroes, wholly benign

Or even for a great good

A roadmap, of you

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Ideas of free will aside

Time, experience, environment--

They will conclude the psyche, actions

But the soul stays the foundation

How you reflect, bedside at 2am.

AN AFTERTHOUGHT -- SOUND ARCHITECTURAL BONES

"It is a fact which cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts."

-Carl Jung

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The very notion of Freedom is one that conjures a familiarly patriotic color palette, one organized into stars and stripes in the confines of a cloth flapping heroically in the wind.

The public schools of my home country (guess which one) will formally condone and even applaud the children who recognize and appreciate this as a universal and fundamental truth. I did, as such, and was commended. And I went on with my day, nothing more on my mind save for recess.

But as people grow older, many can't help but ask questions of higher abstractions and further moral complexity. And at this. We will wonder if "Star-Spangled Banner" was where inhuman entrapment ended and free will began; we will ask ourselves if the two-syllable word used all-too-much is just an idea, if we tell ourselves we're free or if we are just subconsciously answering to a power structure, economic and social climate, a higher deity, our own psyches warped by experiences, or a destiny written for us eons in advance.

But, if I may interject, I'd say that the "true" nature of freedom is rooted mostly in our psychological structures. For it is not what happens before, around, to the left or right, or even to us that inspires change in a situational, societal, or even a personal level; no, when you are witness or subject to anything, it is our ability (and at times our duty) to remain objective and empathetic, to have perspective and consideration not solely to others but to ourselves. And it is when this pseudo-mock-Nirvana is achieved that we have not just understood, but grasped true freedom.

While war, crime, and violence may stem from an inherent distrust of our fellow man, where, if I may ask, did that distrust--holding so many minds hostage-- come from? Was it somewhere in the spectrum between miscommunication and disagreement, or did it stem from the confines of one's character, carved through time by means of poor experience and survivalist will to develop such venomous unfeeling? Whether it be from a deity diagonal of the desired or the sheer tests of a righteous one, the men and women who hate--blindly or otherwise--the career politicians who bomb the lives and properties of neighbors, and those who act with swift malice--no thought in sight for those they are hurting--are, and always have been, the ones who are not free.

Prisoners who have well-earned their loss of freedom through one aspect or another, and the forcibly enslaved who gave into the psychological numbness to simply go forth in their circumstances, can be argued to carry more freedom than the oppressors. Not meaning they fight back, escape, decimate their own states of mind, or even perform any trope of "turning the other cheek." For their freedom is peace of mind and a sense of self and dignified liberation which they cannot have robbed, whereas the laws and the whips, the batons and keys to the cell, could go any day now.

People and organizations and governments have gone forth despicably since the dawn of time, seemingly in the name of sheer sabotage, all racing to bring our population to zero, scales of hope disintegrated long beforehand. Their actions are indubitably uncondonable, and should not go unpunished. But it is when neutral parties and even victims of the misdeeds they commit turn to them with red eyes of malice that they sink to the similarly dark place, a lightless void whose exit feels like a mere echo chamber. And it is not our duty to our planet, each other, nor even ourselves to decline the blindness of rage, but our consistent opportunity to allow ourselves freedom and peace of mind that can (and hopefully one day will) usher in the true potential of our third millennium.

And so it goes.