Enlightenment | Teen Ink

Enlightenment

May 30, 2012
By DearBrutus GOLD, Banks, Oregon
DearBrutus GOLD, Banks, Oregon
11 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Thomas Edison's last words were: 'It's very beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful."
-John Green, Looking For Alaska


I am from the painted walls
Whose sheens do chip with hate,
And I am from a people who arrive at love too late;
The tintinnabulation of our desecratoin swells
Until our ears, stained red with blood, are ringing like the bells.
A picture's worth a thousand words
A whisper's worth a few,
But whispers gone a thousandfold
Can make great fictions true


The author's comments:
The rhythm of the piece hit me late at night while I was listening to M.I.A. (of all things). I was fascinated with her very aggressive beats and almost childlike way she approached these colossal issues facing us. I thought of it overwhelming us all and us being bombarded with these issues, choosing to ignore them, shrouding problematic things in superior sense...the tintinnabulation of our desecration swelling. I often get sort of sad at the state of things. Don't most people? I know nostalgia is useless but it doesn't make me any less nostalgiac. That's there too. A longing. With the sadness, though, comes optimism. Usually I get too lazy or again overcome by sadness to act on it, but I know that the spreading of ideas is what we have as a free society to change the state of things. That's where the end comes from. You can hate your family, your circumstance, you can filter all of these awful injustices through a bouncy rhythm, but the only way you're going to change any of it is through action. It was sort of a motivational piece for myself in a way, too. I needed something under me telling me to go and do something.
Aaaaaaaand this description is officially too long.

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This article has 2 comments.


on Aug. 22 2012 at 1:44 am
DearBrutus GOLD, Banks, Oregon
11 articles 0 photos 2 comments

Favorite Quote:
"Thomas Edison's last words were: 'It's very beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful."
-John Green, Looking For Alaska

Much thanks! 

Tiwaz SILVER said...
on Jun. 3 2012 at 7:10 pm
Tiwaz SILVER, Jackson, Missouri
6 articles 0 photos 28 comments
Nice. I'm always happy to see a poem around here that's not just straightforward/written about something tangible and easy to understand. It's a good thing to come across a poem that you want to read more than once.