03-27-2011, 11:08 AM
"Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap. The end result is a happy child. Free as air, because he has mastered the stupidly simple demands society makes upon him." - James B. Watson
I don’t know how to be kind to people.
My skin still bursting at the seams
from disheveled insides it cannot contain,
tenderness fascinates me, but is always
beyond my grasp. Like a scientist who watches
his animals mate, makes notes
then compiles his solemn essays, I regard
the external gestures, never knowing
how they work, or why one should even try.
As a boy in the corner I studied silence,
its equations everywhere, drawn on the
blackboards of doors and hallways,
which sometimes gave me terse footsteps,
some scraps presented like bones to a dog,
but not often. Not often enough. Now I live alone,
and observe life through invisible glass.
I don’t know how to be kind to people.
My skin still bursting at the seams
from disheveled insides it cannot contain,
tenderness fascinates me, but is always
beyond my grasp. Like a scientist who watches
his animals mate, makes notes
then compiles his solemn essays, I regard
the external gestures, never knowing
how they work, or why one should even try.
As a boy in the corner I studied silence,
its equations everywhere, drawn on the
blackboards of doors and hallways,
which sometimes gave me terse footsteps,
some scraps presented like bones to a dog,
but not often. Not often enough. Now I live alone,
and observe life through invisible glass.
"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - Gene Wolfe