During our recent, year-long pandemic imprisonment, my room - which, objectively, is a very nice room - seemed to transform, late-nights, into a tomb. I had to open all the windows just to feel like I could breathe.

Night after night, when the lights were out, I’d lay perfectly still, perfectly awake until all-hours, listening to crickets. There must be a billion of them in Georgia.

Persistent consciousness can drive you mad.

“Why are your windows open?”, my mom would say, hurrying to close them in winter (to save heat) and summer (to save cool).

I wouldn’t argue - I’d just shrug, wordlessly and reopen them once she left. I seldom argue anymore - I surreptitiously do whatever I want to.

We live in A world of bad thoughts today,
We accept people are satisfied, when they have nothing to say.

There are many helpful, generous actions, that happen all of the time,
From the news media, to daily conversations, the worst is the subject,
In everyone’s mind.

The people that announce the weather, A daily number game,
Thirty per cent chance of rain, why not seventy per cent, it won’t,
They get paid the same.

We know we will die, not the time or way,
If an investigation, finds alcohol or drugs, they are sure that was the
cause, how do they know, it could have just been that person’s day.

Actually, this world is not so bad, and unkind,
It’s the way, ideas, and words are presented,
To make us think, it is getting worse all the time.


                                                                                                    Tom Maxwell © 07/28/2006 AD

A city man met with a villager man.

The village man talked about his work in the fields when the city man stopped  him by saying:

“ Do you know that the city people have invented large airplanes that can fly through the air?”

The villager was deeply impressed.

The city man went on “We have got great boats that can cross the oceans”

The villager was even more impressed.

The city man continued “ We’ve got cars on the road that drive at tremendous speed”.

After all,
The villager asked the city man:

“ The man in the city, you are talking about,
Who flies through the air, and moves through the ocean can he still walk on his two legs?”

There were two good friends,
The flowerwoman and
The fisherwoman.

Both selling
flowers and
fish at the market.

One weekend,
The fisherwoman  invited
The flowerwoman for a sleep over.

At night,
after talking for a long time
they were tired and wanted to sleep.

The fisherwoman  fall asleep immediately,
as she was sleeping in her home,
but the flowerswoman could not fall asleep.
She was tossing because of the smell of fish in the house.

She woke up, and got a few flowers from her basket, and put them on the table.
The flowers smell helped her easily fall asleep.

Suddenly,
The fisherwoman got up,
wondering from where this awful
smell was coming.
“ I can’t tolerate flowers smell. “
She removed the flowers from the table.
The fish smell again helped her fall asleep.

All felt the fable
Dwindle & swell
The swindle whispered
Into every eyeball
The tramelled multifarious
Steady steady
Soft sell
Who'd fall for that
We say
As it settles down to dwell
In our depths & recesses
Tales of decline & progress
Denied

The vast expanse
is worrisome.
The search is futile,
in the end is all very foolish.
Knowledge allows the proposition
that there’s a lot we’ll never know.
While ignorance is loud and obnoxious,
completely unaware of it’s shortcomings.
The struggle
takes place in between.