Many Tiny Pals
for Eric Rose
thousands of ants in my house
even more termites
thought I lived alone
thought I had but a few friends
turn my back a minute, turn back to find,
ants in the thousands
in my bowl of dinner
when I thought I was dining alone
© Obediah Michael Smith, 2007
7:31 p.m. 16/07/07
for Eric Rose
thousands of ants in my house
even more termites
thought I lived alone
thought I had but a few friends
turn my back a minute, turn back to find,
ants in the thousands
in my bowl of dinner
when I thought I was dining alone
© Obediah Michael Smith, 2007
7:31 p.m. 16/07/07
posted by Obie Quiet at 7:30 PM
10 Comments:
oh my dear friend, if you have thousands of pals, then i have millions..the whole red army is with me!
How can we, or why therefore should we, ever be or ever feel lonely? And further, what of all the bugs actually in our bodies - all through – millions?
Though some are benign, others desire us for breakfast lunch and- or breakfast lunch or dinner. Any meal would do.
They'd wish to consume us all as well as consume all of us - which amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? I mean all of us individually as well as our entire species and afterwards lick their greasy lips.
This is why we constantly fight back. We jog, we bathe, we eat; we take our vitamins, our medicines.
By 70 though or not long thereafter, they wear us down. We drop to our stomachs - upon our faces and they're on our backs for certain, ululating in triumph, in victory.
We must therefore get our poems out - our message said, sent, as readily as we possibly can.
Robert West must feel he's immortal with time to enunciate bull shit rather than realize that each attempt at poetry must be regarded as his possible last words; even as I myself must regard what I am expressing right here an right now.
At any moment, our end like a period or exclamation mark, can land in our way; can conclude our journey and eternity, suddenly, can commence; with bugs we’d been hosting, consuming our delicious remains.
today i met a man who was a drug addict, a woman whose son molested a young child (14), visited my friend who was on death row
all lookin' int he newspaper to see whether they could afford food today in the specials..gentlemen for someone who is so privalged as myself why do you feel you have to get used ot me because you tired of this miserable life and not want to liberate the core fron its non-existance.
No...if you are born here first and primarily that is your duty to care ..those who do not cannot enjoy the fruits of my land nor judge it because they want it to be soemthing else..often when we claim the small ..it is because we think we are better than the lot. we are all gulty of that..strangers can come into this land and be made princes yet our own is suffeing and because Aristide lost the war and Kuande liked too many woman or in the Bahamas bastards don't feel any of their children are illegitimate ....please lets get real and stop playin'... the game is who is being left behind (GOD)because really we all are and it took living in Canada to understand that ....DVH
why don't these people tellyou teri story and make you the leader ...i tired
I don't know that what dvh relates has anything to do with poem posted, "Many Tiny Pals". Was poem misunderstood or am I misunderstanding dvh and connections she's made - connection she sees? I hunger still therefore for commentary on the poem as conceived and posted here. Thanks to you anyway for stopping by. Suppose I must even appreciate a visitor who stops and pees against my wall or would that for dvh, be a difficult feat?
I am carrying on a comment Obediah...stop..go..com..enough..
this is rea,l do I not understand or have the youthful patience..I agree...we are merely stopping posts to each other..your poem did not over ride my day...sorry I should have known when to cut off, known how to understand.dvh
I thought of you today as I drove passed a concrete pillar where a whole army of ants were marching into the cracks of the foundation. I thought what an interesting image. I would have used it myself had it not already been taken. My comments which in a sobring light of day' merely reflected my mental exhaustion and the futility I often feel about life. I think what I find even more frightening is that I am becoming numb to the whole experience within these encouters.
Your poem has taken me a day to digest, I suspect I took ants as metaphore for people. And not cutting off the day felt as your poem suggested to me...being over run over by the parade of insects. Perverse I know but what induced my hopeless, helpless feelings - my inaudible ramblings which often becomes a onesided conversation. To the poem...
"They'd wish to consume us all as well as consume"
this is often the feeling of being over run by the mechahnics of life.
The image of the ant so small and insignificant. Sadder still, all identical by default and so ingrained in their genetic make-up. The tragedy for me as mortal is that they cannot change, they must continue to wear the armer they were born with, perform a role already defined.
How both a blessing and a curse Atleast they know what their role is going to be from life to death...dvh
dawnvictoriahanna, that unvarying routine you imagine to be the way of the life of ants, the way you see them, is the way they see us or the way we're viewed by eyes above us human beings.
Much of what we see as so indispensable and take so serious is on some other level regarded as but superfluous; as not at all more significant than ants.
Hierarchy within our species as well as within vast creation, has to be eliminated. No more of status pushing up and pushing down; putting up and putting down. All creation has to be HOLY. Everything, everyone holy, nothing excluded.
"Many Tiny Pals" though, is a meditation on what we imagine is solitude.
I wish to release the ants. No, as a subject for art or artist, they cannot be taken. See for example, role of ants in Vietnamese film, "Scent of Green Papaya".
It is near as impossible to exhaust ants as an artistic subject as it is to exhaust the inspiration snow produces, provides.
"Many Tiny Pals" merely documents one Sunday afternoon experience in my kitchen with these tiny creatures who, with me, reside in my house unless or until they crawl away or until the season they’re in changes.
I suspect I was too serious...I am in the process of forming a poem entitled 'life of a flea' the signicance I suspose is that compared to the creator we are small, the tiniest compared to the creator. I am mixing metephors and also poems...sorry.
Insects are creation and so is 'man'. our unique privalidge is that we can determine that uniqueness if we try, reconfigure if you like. I think it makes us special in that chain of creation.
However, on a more humble note...Ants in kitchens and in your bowl is also an image which is fantastical....and equally as divine. I am told they have alot of protein....dawn
certainly, I like your poem on meditation, solitude and are we ever alone?...I am glad I chose to stop by this poem in particular and happier for the clarification.
Medicine when taken in small doses can cure, small ants in Kitchen are creation and "life is far too important to be taken so seriously"(Oscar Wilde)
....dawn
I was taken into Kafka's world in "Metamorphasis" ..asking one of the questions "what would it be like to wake up as an insect, the ramifications and significance of viewing the world from the perspective of an insect...how wonderful your poem has evoked such passions and imagery however misconstuded on my part...thanks ...dawn
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