"It is possible to live on earth as you mean to live hereafter. But if men will not let you, then quit the house of life...No need to make a great business of it. In a while now you will be ashes or bare bones; a name, or perhaps not even a name..." - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
“Look at what they give you” – he said very slowly to no-one but himself, breathing air and smoke, vaguely watching the children playing on the grass, bickering over rights to the slides and the climbing frame. “You grind yourself out in the corporate machinery, and what’s left of you is humiliated by pictures of happy families, vegan food and athletes, pornography and return on investment, which trample your self-esteem and eat you up with lust.”
Silently now and bitterly he mused: “I can
see that people are asleep, they are living their lives on autocorrect and
spell check. I am asleep as well.”
Take a breath of fresh air
and look up to the sky, where the moon wanes slyly between flat, cold clouds
and the roof-tops are windswept with October’s chilly arrival.
The sunset bleeds through the
airport windows where the suicide bomber struck.
He picked a leaf from the
folded deck chair, unfolded it, sat down on it. She is not coming again. She is
like the Tollund Man, clinging to her grave of peat. This is entirely his Gorky Park.
Cigarette ends are everywhere. The garden has
died and weeds he previously paid no attention to have grown up from the gravel and become tall
as the children.