pathetic fallacy

    All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things" - John Ruskin (1856)

    I sit in the kitchen lazily killing ants, dishing out epic proportions
    of death by bug spray, hot water, even organic bergamot.
    It's pointless, of course; the damn things come back every time
    like an insatiable tribe of lemmings, cruising off the cliff
    of my formica table to certain doom, leaving broken scent trails
    everywhere like desert ruins. Spiders and geckos
    are of the same blind gumption, again and again they brave
    the inevitable lightning of my cats' claws; the only
    forensic evidence, a perfectly clean skeleton
    between the cutlery drawer and the tea towels. Downstairs
    my neighbour is shouting until her son remembers
    to stop bawling when his parents fight. Another's dog cries
    for pity and affection from the one human too busy to care.
    Just as I now refuse my beloved felines their treats, while
    scanning the headlines for fresh tragedy. A young woman
    preparing herself for a night of slow passion found
    her husband inexplicably lost between the dishes
    and her evening shower. Two cars kissed, head-on
    and it broke their hearts, no survivors. Summer and skirts
    in England, it seems, are getting shorter. Florists are dying
    out because of the internet. I think of young snow,
    so innocent it has never touched
    the ground, growing slush-grey on our burnt tarmac,
    how daffodils would curl and fester in the ordinary cruelty
    of this tropical heat. Enough sorrow for our poets
    to put down their lattes, grubby notepads,
    trample home through discoloured grass. Figure
    a new way to count dead ants, rate winter
    and traffic, weigh silence against loss.

    in memoriam 2001-09-11



25 September 2001   21:30 hours
table { } epitaph: In the end