"Gentleness" stands out for me, stood out as unique even as I was writing it. It's maybe too easy to get away from shamanistic roots and a connection to the world when we get into transcendence. As I wrote this, I felt sort of Lost Boys or adolescent, but there is also an under-represented frustration with bureaucratic obfuscations that is relevant in any industrialized, representative society when "the buck" doesn't stop anywhere except at ecological devastation and at whatever crushes the lowest class. This nature-connection and adolescent leaning towards extremism can grow into fanaticism and terrorism or it can mature into excellent and sharp criticism. When the administrators, bureaucrats, middle class, and representatives do not include this agitation and life-or-death clarity, it shows up in other ways and places. Sometimes shamanism and indigenous myths can seem unsophisticated or backwards, but while we don't need to limit ourselves to any particularist myths, we also sell ourselves short if we ignore the truths they contain. This is for the wolf in all of us. I'd personally rather be dead than jaded or deceitful, I'd rather starve than choke my spirit, market my personality, or sell my soul.
If you have not been alone
for lifetimes on end,
you cannot comprehend
our gentleness.
Civilized people think we are fierce.
We kill without conscience.
They think as they do since they want to believe
innocence can be made.
They wipe away the blood and sterilize the area.
They paint over lines on their faces.
They look without conscience,
painting the world a jaded patina
with their tired glance.
It is ugly.
We know sleep makes us vulnerable
and movement means hunger
as well as danger.
They look for the wildness in our eyes
and we look away.
We watch their feet.
We smell them coming and leave.
We avoid their voices
and shun where they live.
They have traded gentle
for docile.
---move quietly---
They want everything to be
public domain.
---strike quickly---
Even their slaughter is mass production.
Everything is work to them.
Step into the wilderness;
everything is life.
They live smooth lives,
but we know grace.
They argue over their carrion-meal
being either dead, or long-dead.
They look for what others have already found
and destroyed.
We don't seek free meals.
Our food comes from life fresh-lived.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz