the deepening ground

“If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.”

George Eliot

Meditations on Modernity

By Vincent H. Anastasi 2023

I. The Race

I pledge nothing to these days:
the suicide pace rat race running raw,
chaffing, clawing, dog eat dog,
up rickety ladders' rotting rungs,
ever scrambling to the top
for the fleeting honor of being first to fall;
the relational tectonics of kingdoms colliding
in the burnout busyness and fault line frictions
of perpetually pantomimed life;
the frantic mill turning out warped boards
from which nothing can be made,
fit only for the flames.

---

Parts two through four will be released over the next three days.