The darkness and the light

A creature born
within the comforting anonymity of darkness

Awakens in the harsh truth of daylight

It squirms
in the glare
afraid of the light
that pins it to the chair like a needle through its heart

Its heart beats faster
Panic starts to creep into its soul

Does it understand?
Or is it so blinded by the light
that it can think only of returning
to the velvet cloak of darkness?

No matter

Perhaps it is better that it doesn't realize
how close death has come

But make no mistake, there is no escape
It has reached the end, and soon it will die

It bares its tiny fangs
hoping for a chance to strike
to sink its teeth deep into the flesh of its tormentor

But that chance will never come

And somewhere
beneath the gleam of hatred in those eyes
lurks the certain knowledge of its impending death

And it begins to know fear

This is part of your guilt. You did this to me

And you don't even know who I am

I wasn't part of your war
I was an innocent

I'm glad that you remember
Don't you feel guilty?
Don't you feel ashamed of what you did

Indiscriminate killing
No sense of morality
No thought given to the consequences of your actions

That's what makes us different

The creature's diseased mind
cannot understand its plight
Its imagination is too limited
to perceive the truth

It cannot be saved

The creature's cries grow louder
but no one can hear them

It's time



From the lines of Silaran in Star Trek: Deep Space 9 episode The Darkness and the Light. Lines with plot points in removed and punctuation stripped out. Submitted by Wesley Brown.

Dearest Jamie

I bought my lovely boyfriend Darren
your book for Christmas and i haven't
had to cook a meal
since

He went through the cupboards
to find out what we were missing
from your list and he even invested
£100.00 buying a magimix.

He stopped smoking Monday
and finds thinking about what he needs
to buy to prepare the evening meal
a good distraction from the withdrawal
symptoms.

Now i don't want you or your readers
to think that i'm complaining
because
i know i've got it made (he even hoovers,
irons and cleans the bathroom)
the only problem i'm having is that
everything
is so tasty i'm clearing my plate
and i'm worried i'm going to be
the size
of a house

We're moving to a new home next month
and he's informed me he'd like a black
gloss kitchen and a range to cook on

He bought me black diamonds,
I think he's a keeper.



Taken from a comment left on a dumpling recipe on Jamie Oliver's website on the 7th January 2009. Some exclamation marks removed. Submitted by Nikki.

Drunkorexia

“Eatin’s Cheatin’” echoes around the office on a Friday afternoon.
Women pick over their naked salads and extra extra light low fat
Philly on Ryvita. The preparations for ‘Rosé o’clock’ are well
under way.
They’ll grumble through the afternoon and suppress the urge
to be
‘naughty’ whenever anyone offers a biscuit, sweet or chocolate.
Fun.



From Drunkorexia: A stupid name, but a serious problem on the Independent blogs. Omitted words: 'as' (line 1) and 'their way' (4). Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

Purge the entire board

Testosterone-fuelled silverbacks
eat what they kill
in under-supervised dealing rooms,
skimming fortunes
from everyone else's endeavour.
So far the remedies are
cough drops for cancer.



Taken from Polly Toynbee's Guardian column, Fri 6 July 2012. Submitted by Rishi Dastidar.

Flower battle

Enter and stand
Enter, leap at, roaring
Back slowly off

Roar, shake arm, roll on back
Eat earth, throw rocks
Rush at and past opponent

Avoid, show back

Leap at opponent’s back
Miss
Return

(Without looking) avoid
Turn to face opponent

Catch head with rear hand (without looking)
strike head with forearm

Rise, stagger, roll on back
Roar, shake arm, leap on head

Avoid, back off
Roar, pursue
Leap at roaring

Grasp head with forearm
flick rear arm in arc
strike downward blow

Sag, moan, rise
leap and crush in bear hug
lift in air

Draw dagger
Stab in chest

Fall on back
Die

Advance calmly, inspect corpse
Back off




Basic fighting movements: a section of the perang kembang (flower battle) from a puppeteer’s handbook for the study of wayang kulit or Javanese shadow play. As found in On Thrones of Gold, ed. James Brandon, (Hawaii 1993). Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

The Legacy

The photos show a pool with a slide
and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting
separated from the gas chambers by just a few yards.
His grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries
because they smelled of ash from the ovens.

“So you ask yourself, they had to die. I'm alive.
Why am I alive?
To carry this guilt, this burden
That must be the only reason I exist
to do what he should have done.”

Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes.
“I kept thinking this has to stop
at some point they have to stop shooting.
If it doesn't stop I'll go crazy right here in this theatre.”
She left the cinema suffering from shock.

Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.
"When my brother had it done, he said to me 'I cut the line'."
Seeing his father's childhood home he broke down
kept repeating the word "insanity".


Taken from an article in BBC magazine about the descendants of high profile Nazis, 22 May 2012. Some words and phrases omitted for scansion. Submitted by Grace Andreacchi.

Swallowing razorblades

Hollow man;
You’re over dead dreams—
Hopeless.
Picture perfect, pathetic.
Flesh, bone and weakness.

Five months?
Moments in oblivion.
Feed them to the pigs.

I watched a cold day in Hell:
Emotional breakdown,
Begin breaking point,
Romance is dead.



From song titles by the band Parkway Drive. Submitted by Elizabeth.

we hail you with joy

your silence
has sounded
louder
than the jabber
of politics
and the clang
of military power;

out of deep darkness
your little lamp has
shone
across the planet;
your stillness
has moved the world.


Taken from the oration given in honour of Aung San Suu Kyi when she received an honorary doctorate in Oxford, 20 June 2012. Submitted by Ailsa Holland.

You have an almost missionary zeal

So it's perfectly
possible to live
a broadly satisfying life
all on your own, communing
with high art, being a lonely
heroic figure that walks
that long, dramatic path to
the piano centre stage.
This all works fine

as long as you cling
to the notion that the music
you're playing is written
by dead, distant gods.
On the other hand, it all

blows apart when you start
integrating living composers,
as all the fixed points get swept
away; all composers take
on a human face, the church-like reverence
disappears, and suddenly audiences
become a collection of individuals
who may or may not
like what you're doing. Promoters
start getting nervous, so you,
the performer,
have to start communicating
fast. That's why.



From An Interview with Joanna MacGregor on SoundCircus. Submitted by Andrew Bailey.