10:20<\/p>\n
Caroline hadn’t had much of a life up until now: no friends, no dreams, no real interests. When she had first arrived in the city, she had hung out at these odd little cafes where people would get up and slam.<\/p>\n
Slamming, or poetry slamming, or spoken word art generally, was an odd new trend where people would compete by standing up and reading their poems aloud, depending more on rhythm and flow than rhymes and structure.<\/p>\n
Caroline tried it one particularly depressing night with no great success.<\/p>\n
We Are Base<\/i><\/b>
\nby Caroline D.<\/p>\n
Have you considered the beast that’s inside you?
\nThe animal that lurks
\nand screams from inside?<\/p>\n
Have you considered,
\nletting it out, letting it ride
\nacross the savannah?<\/p>\n
Tearing, rending, chewing, spitting,
\ntrying to derive some sustenance from the
\nmeager flesh of the animals that scurry and hurry and pretend they are doing something important,
\nsomething real.<\/p>\n
Those pathetic weak and childish beasts that swirl and spin
\naround you
\nevery day,
\nevery minute,
\nevery second,
\nclogging your minds with the dust of their travels and leaving you nothing but a gritty taste on your lips and a brain filled with the stink of their passage.<\/p>\n
Have you ever wondered
\nif you could survive on their leftovers,
\nthe remnants of their lives, the sadness and the pain and the failure and defeat<\/p>\n
Of your fellow man who thinks,
\nwho believes
\nwho knows<\/p>\n
That he, or she, or it
\nis better than you,
\nstronger,
\nfaster,
\nmore wild,
\nmore fierce,
\nmore able<\/p>\n
I’ve never wondered.
\nI’ve never had to.
\nMy beast
\ncannot be caged,<\/p>\n
my beast cannot be held back,
\nmy beast cannot be denied.
\nFrom the moment I was conceived,
\nmy beast has roamed,
\nand torn
\nand attacked
\nand run away.<\/p>\n
My beast has lost and won
\nand lost again.
\nMy beast has survived on the leavings,
\nscavenged the corpses of others less strong,
\ngnawed on the edges of their success
\nMy beast has known hunger and desperation and fear and emptiness.
\nMy beast bears the scars of the struggle,
\nthe aches of constant failure
\nand the price of its existence.<\/p>\n
But my beast survives where others
\nlie in heaps and piles and mounds and walls
\nof bleached-out bones and scraps of fur
\nand teeth
\nand the small, tiny treasures
\nthat every beast, every soul,
\ncarries with it
\nto the end.<\/p>\n
I once considered recalling the thing,
\nbringing it home to rest,
\nto curl up in the warmth of my mind
\ncontent, peaceful, happy with itself
\nand full.
\nFull of hope and sustained by the future.
\nI once considered caging the animal inside
\nAnd feeding it
\nAnd caring for it
\nand loving it
\nAnd trying to make it,
\nand me,
\nhappy.<\/p>\n
But I hate the beast
\nI hate its teeth, its claws, its smell
\nand I hate the way it hungers and slathers and whines and
\nspins
\nround and round trying to get comfortable
\ntrying to rearrange my mind to suit its dirty needs,
\nits slimy, selfish, horrid ways
\nI hate the beast and so
\nI cast it out.<\/p>\n
Let it
\nwork for me,
\nlet it
\nbring me its tribute,
\nits trophies
\nits prey<\/p>\n
Who cares about its victims,
\nwho cares about their lives
\nNo one cares about
\nmy
\nbeast
\nNot even me.<\/p>\n
So if you’ve ever wondered
\nWhat it would be like
\nto set free the animal inside
\nand free yourself from the pain
\nand anguish
\nof cowering in fear of your own soul<\/p>\n
Don’t.<\/p>\n
Don’t wonder,
\ndon’t fear, don’t hide,
\ndon’t dither and dodder or wither and whine about
\nwhy or why not or how, or what or when<\/p>\n
Set free the caged creature, just cast open the gates
\nThere is no need to worry
\nLeave the prey to their own
\nfates.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
10:20 Caroline hadn’t had much of a life up until now: no friends, no dreams, no real interests. When she had first arrived in the city, she had hung out at these odd little cafes where people would get up and slam. Slamming, or poetry slamming, or spoken word art generally, was an odd new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,29],"tags":[38],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}