Living Things

I often have conversations

With objects around me -

From

Mindless banter snowballing into

Heart-to-heart conversations,

To

Waking up in the middle of the night,

Fumbling for the right switch in the darkness

To put the lights on so I can see

For a split second,

Things obligingly lying still in their place,

As they stagger through burdened time

To lull myself into sleep

With an assurance of familiarity.

On days I enter my room 

With bottled thoughts, when these things, 

With all their weathered, withered strength

Spur me on to etch out utterances at length

Knowing as they do, 

You don't always seek 

A response, reaction, remark, judgment, 

To something you nevertheless feel the need to speak, 

Which at times starts to turn incomprehensible

To yourself and to the other, 

As your tongue rolls them out

In the gibberish of vowels and consonants.

So I start off on a mindless rhyme

At times confessing my mind's crimes,

Scraping out fears rusty with neglect

Pulling out halted thoughts from a staggering stack,

Laughing as I admit to myself that joke was funny.

Crying with relish for I won't be accused of being weak.

Stretching out a tune I'd only ventured to hum [in public], 

Into a song, hearing my voice sing & strum,

In a long time.    

                           [Hitting the table with a pen 

                           To make up for the beats.]

Dancing with awkward steps on my two left feet,

But dancing nevertheless.

[Thank goodness I have feet to dance.)

P.S At times, when the familiarity 
      Of my own presence poses a threat,
      I need their company, these non-living things, 
      The only solace sensitive to my minds' mutterings.

“I do not believe,” [Edison] said, “that matter is inert, acted upon by an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand of ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence? . . . Gathered together in certain forms, the atoms constitute animals of the lower orders. Finally they combine in man, who represents the total intelligence of all the atoms.”

“But where does this intelligence come from originally?” I asked.


“From some power greater than ourselves.”