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Duality of the soul
good, bad, happy, sad
Loved, unloved
Wanted, unwanted
The malady of morality.
Who would want to live forever today?
Corruption, disease, pain, infection, brutality.
Pop my date of cessation on a notepad,
I'll get around to being, bad looks like the
World already has.
© JLB
Vermillion lips smile knowingly
across the room, so at ease it's
almost angelic to see.

He grips his wine glass to almost breaking point,
what the **** is she doing here?
More to the point ,How is she here?

Relationships are like cats, let them out,
and well they'd better be neutered.
That's what gramma said!

Slowly, sensually almost, she sashayed
over to him, she could see his tension,
but not his fear.........yet.

Face to face they smile, but her smile never
reaches her eyes, he stammers, drops his glass,
'Here, she says you need air'

Outside, he's composed
'No one knows, no one knows' he keeps repeating
Who are you talking to darling? She whispers

Not me,I'm dead, you shot me,
I was there, then kicks him hard
Vulnerable alone with his red mouthed wife he screams.

Guests rush out, to their host babbling,
Incoherent, confessing to ******,
screaming over and over, blue lights in the distance

Closer and closer, guests now witnesses.
Host now completely within the pain of a mental
Eternal mind slip.

She, moves closer to him, soothes him, sirens closer,
reassures him as he screams,that yes his wife is dead
appeased he looks up in bewilderment.

Oh, me, oh darling brother in law did you forget?
Jo's twin, the one au-pairing abroad when you married
Pleased to meet you
© JLB
As I look all around, I see things you do not see,
how can that be?
Listening carefully I strain to hear that creak once more,
a microphone is needed if you cannot hear that moan.
Overblown by the next sound, a groan, what next?
a rattling chain? A swinging pendulum?
Nevermore will I fear any sight, or sound, man or
beast, pit or grave.
E**xclusively unique, privileged to be alone yet surrounded,
by those that still exist, exist in memories, hearts, sounds and smell, no,that mist was more than just a vapour, just look closer
© JLB
Poe's 'Alone'is simply simple and stunning in its subject and form. A master.
Dynastic lineage
              Of
  *Kindred people

               *Our

   Family tree
               humanity  
Genealogy.
© JLB
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Snoozing quietly on a sunny day,
with eyes half closed, breathing relaxed,
listening to the sounds the sun brings out.
Children screaming with play, lawn mowers cutting,
bees buzzing and singing birds.

Languidly lost in time bemused at the thoughts
running free in my mind. I start to muse on
ridiculous things:
Why liquid soap?
Why a date of birth but no date of death? (That would be helpful like a use by date on food, fit in that bucket list or miss your deadline)

Why do ice lollies only come in packs of three like condoms?
Why are children so ultimately free?
Why does the sun make us feel so safe?
Why does road rage come out in the sun?
Why do we insist on eating burnt carcasses and underdone chicken?
At barbecues that take forever to organise with people you'd rather flail alive?
© JLB
Deep in thought; contemplative.

Contemplation; meditation. A product of contemplation; a thought. "an elegant tapestry of quotations, musings, aphorisms, and autobiographical reflections" (James Atlas).
My body temperature rises like the moon.
Odd that the sun is the symbol of heat,
yet, most heat is felt at night.
Subtlest of sighs and I am undone.
Buttressed and encompassed by you.
I want to bite, nibble, peck at your neck
Like an artist with granite I want to carve into you
I crave you, I want to market our practiced need.
Subtle yet lulled, our lust will be boundless.
Founded on our need to keep our word.
We together are a force, a natural force.
Unreserved, unobserved, unconcerned
I allow you to flood into me.
Hazily, I am drawn to the figure on the floor,
we swore no more, but the thrill of the slow ****,
allows us to be enthralled, exhilarated, liberated.
The moon wanes, the body grows cold, we soar
as we clean the gore.
We swear 'nevermore' but are we just Poe's distraught
lovers, falling into madness?
The madness of the bloodlust, ******.
© JLB
Killer Couples: Love and lust are among the most powerful of emotions, but when a joint thirst for violence is thrown into the mix, it creates the ultimate lethal cocktail.
Pride, personified, Satan.
Lucifer's pride his desire to compete with God
his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan.

Pride personified, but what of us, the humans,not Angels
What pride are we guilty of?
The original and most deadly of the seven.

The original and most serious of the seven deadly sins,
the source of the others
Pride is sometimes viewed as excessive or as a vice.

Pride, Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour", but
Pride involves exhilarated pleasure and a feeling of accomplishment.

What accomplishment?
That one is better than others?
Our social and economic standing?

Our supercilious ego's?
A better house? The pride that comes with snobbery?
Our arrogance at believing in only ourselves?

Yet, through negativity,positivity can come of pride,
results from satisfaction with meeting personal goals;
Family, friends, education.

Amplified and multiplied, pride
takes a satisfied place in all our hearts.
A complex secondary emotion.

The first and strongest emotion being love
Love cannot be prideful
Yet, pride comes before a fall.

And we as humans fall in love
© JLB

One definition of pride in the first sense comes from St. Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence".In this sense, the opposite of pride is either humility or guilt.
I could compare envy to jealousy
quite easily
but that would be a disservice
to envy
Not to mention a disservice to jealousy.

Jealousy and envy are two
distinct emotions
And two distinct sins but
Envy is both malign and benign.
Envy that most unhappy of the sins.

And, unhappy I was watching you with her.
Envious of her, because she got to touch you
Kiss you, need you, love you.
I wished misfortune on you every time
I saw your joy in each other.

I coveted you.
I scarcely thought of anyone else.
My unhappiness, envy, made me send ill will
your way. Intensely petty thoughts of ill.
So much it made me unhappy, and yet mattered nil.

I'd rendered and reduced you to a possession
MINE.
Why her? Was I not merry and pretty enough?
I desired you above all
yet I was the one to fall from grace.
I turned inward, into a covetous envious hag.

I wanted to deprive you of her
for you to see only me, irony.
In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious
is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire
because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low.

The only one brought low was me.
I gained no pleasure
© JLB
Envy can be directly related to the Ten Commandments, specifically, "Neither shall you desire... anything that belongs to your neighbour."
Hate not blood course through my veins
I want to laugh in your face, when you feel the pain
My fury is my story not yours to tell
Mine to yell, demonstrate, remonstrate
Wrath, in its purest form, presents with self-destructiveness, violence, and hate that provokes feuds that go on for centuries.
Wrath persists long after the person who did another a grievous wrong is dead. But, wrath is mine to feel, to touch, to taste.
Feelings of anger impatience, revenge, and lividity.
Wrath is allowing my revenge, call it self-destructive, call it
bad behaviour, my sin of wrath is directed internally toward me.
Suicide, deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of hatred directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.
But,you made me angry so it's you I reject.
When cold tempered steel,
meets hot vengeful blood
© JLB
Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite". In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally as well as externally.
Today
Sunday
Slows

Today
Apathy
Grows.

Today
Indolent
Desires

­Today
Scarecrows
Stand

Today
Talents
Wane

Today
Numbness
Reigns­

Today
Sloth
Drove

Today
Just
Froze

Today
Good
Failed

Today
Evil
Grows


All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke
© JLB
Dante's Purgatorio he had portrayed the penance for acedia (sloth/listlessness) as running continuously at top speed.
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