Scribe
Scribe
2017
Riddle
Met some Jains years ago,
tricked out in masks
covering their noses and mouths,
lest insects suffer under them
nostril-hair capture
and early demise.
Against agronomy
and gardening, they were—
but ate salads anyway,
as long as someone else
displaced the little critters,
mashing or thrashing
their little bodies unavoidably
into kicking the bucket.
Right to life—
human rights, animal rights,
divine rights, dominion …
“Go in and possess the land.”
Who’s right, who’s wrong?
Where do rights begin and end?
Who’s rights supersede another’s?
And who says?
Clean your house …
Bacteria wiped out,
larvae sucked up,
and you’re wanted
“Dead or Alive.”
Eat meat …
You’ve killed without compunction
Drink milk …
Animal bondage is on your hands—
their families torn asunder
by your spiritual cannibalism
Some staunch believers
of doing no harm
sleepwalk for amnesty—
to hoodwink the percept
of ants, spiders and other crawlies
swept, wiped or push-broomed
into demise at their hands.
Self-exonerating their aggregate
slice of life trespass
with a plea of innocence,
exclaiming to their moral censor
“No insecticide, no death!”
Thus, their coveted weapon
of ahimsa reconciliation—
the vacuum.
Can’t wash your hands
any cleaner than a breeze
blowing in reverse—
reversing karma
with perfect absolution
from nature’s harshness
that pits species against species.
Out of sight, out of mind,
out of noticing
those tidying-up fatalities.
Adherence to Divine Order
is by intent, not results.
Intention waves prosecution,
don’t you know.
But who’s giving the orders
and who has the Giver’s ear?
Which god or goddess
trumps another,
which mortal is the giver in flesh,
Viceroy on earth
overseeing the Great Plan?
If ultimate divinity
turning the wheels of justice
is not your thing;
choosing instead to follow
your personal spiritual creed,
how do you reconcile suffering
in who gets it and who don’t?
A lot of responsibility
replacing the Big Kahuna
with your personal self,
living the “superior” life
by presumptive self-mastery
of transcendent absorption.
Of course, if all of this
is the dream that spiritual paths
wax mystical about,
suffering is a non-reality,
a non sequitur
in the greater scheme
of all there is.
Try telling that to yourself,
when that old grizzly
wants you for dinner.
There’s no harmless living
within realms of cause and effect,
of beginning and ending,
however you base your sanctimony
beyond peradventure.
That hypothetical perfect life,
you presumptively lead,
still leaves a footprint
upon terra and firma
of interdependent life and death
echoing finite existence—
no matter the “flawless aircraft”
you fly inside your mind’s eye
onto mythical Shangri-La—
swagging your perfection
from one side of your vanity
to the other.
And in the contradiction
of dreaming a dream
of a non-dream,
riddle me this then …
Not asleep, not awake.
—Thinning of the Veils (Work in Progress)
Copyright © Carl Hitchens 2017
Thursday, June 1, 2017