1954 Allegory

Listen...

Do you hear that?

No?

Try putting your fingers in your ears,

Like a little kid refusing to hear the truth.

Hear it now?

Yes, I mean the silence.

Only it's not as silent as you'd assume. It's the blood being pumped through your body. Like a band of boys standing around a fire, as the light of day dims, the beast inside stirs. Perhaps Golding was right, only the head removed from the body, a Lord of Flies would be able to turn serenity into celebration. Every drop of blood that passes is a strike of the drum head, and every breath prompts another pound. I don't know how to dance, but I find myself gazing from a rock, wishing to join in.

If your joints are sawdust and termite food, then you may hear a creak when your finger barely quivers. An old oak door inside of you being nudged at by the kissing wind. Poe's raven, sits gingerly atop the frame, cawing insanity into one's soul. When the hissing of the beak nevermore returns, the deathly silenced will be filled by the sound of plumage being plucked and a fire being stoked.

And if you allow yourself to sit so still, you'll feel the trembling. It starts in the top of your diaphragm and spreads across your body when it reaches your toes your skin will crawl with the previously mentioned termites as they dig tunnels through veins. This shaking is more than fear, it's the thundering footsteps of a stampede, running into a setting sun-set to be burned alive by a star seemingly grazing the earth with unforgiving lips. But I've chased stars before and have not yet found the scorched trail of lips coated in poisonous honey. So where does the trampling herd go? Well, that's where the running began. Mother Nature opened herself just over the crest of a hill and swallowed them whole. That's what the shaking is- the earth goddess inside of you giggling as her tongue is tickled by tiny feet.

Do you hear it now?