Vergogna

(/vair-'gone-ya/)

~
There are 7 paths around guilt.
Gilt-edged guilt. The guilt that you
wake to in the morning after brief crystal and opening,
that plunge, that dungeon. We can
see it as a nasty connurbation and walk our
way around through meadows of seeming innocence.
We can justify, explain, deny. We can seeming obviate
by good doing. We can contextualise, deconstruct, manipulate.

Or, we can see it as a tepid bath, a purgatory,
and turn the hot tap of forgetting
and the cold of cold night with our mental toe, as we
feel the hours drift by - future as ever-entropy.
We sense how actions can be despite of
spite, but not feel it, as all things slow to
veil. We have it as cloud that rings
in our eyes.

Guilt is its own end. To leave in spirit or soul without peace and
innocence can seem the only way: a stone in our shoe, a bonespur, a
cramping of muscle and mind. There are no paths
around guilt. If there were, guilt would have
no function. But, guilt is shared - guilt is a secret
compact. Let he who is guiltless cast the
first stone. To render guilty is to deny our guilt.
~
We weave shadows aound us. We offer
as truth what is lie. We offer it as stony-faced,
pure, transient, almost even prepossessing but,
if questioned or sympathied, empathised, to that 'with', we say 'no' - I was only surfacing as in surface,
not raising or rising some island of self
from a cool, warm sea.

We build worlds around us
that are display and strategy. Their meaning
is not in truth but in gain, ours; we network
to diminish and rise from ourselves, to
fill the shoes of others, to rape and harvest.

And then we wonder if we are lied to?
We scour for clues, we feel
the heavy silence. ~ We
think to find others are true,
someone sonmewhere is genuine. ~
We seek to receive what we rarely
give in ourselves. I plead the most
guilty.
~
To be guilty is not the most evil, but to
have been. To be unguilty is.
~
Guilt is handed down through the
generations, is passed between siblings
and compatriots. It's 'pass the parcel'
and 'musical chairs', until choirs fall
silent, until the sad man,
in isola,
says, yes, I accept this guilt,
I own it, I will not pass it on.