on my table, two roses float in a shallow vase splendorous in their hues in the background INXS plays softly: ”in the dark of night…” whilst a white pussycat grooms herself on the sofa, stopping intermittently to stare intensely, with brilliant blue eyes into the vacant space I never leave my house any more out in the world a tiny creature walks softly, pretending to carry a big stick and has everyone scared out of their wits except the mobs that burn our cities and the thugs toppling statues in a bid for power — the empty gestures of idiots ”visions of swastikas in my head…” sings Bowie contrasting with my own visions of Plato and his Republic, and the 2048 of Kar-Wai Wong the triquetra of things seen, those imagined and what stares me in the face, right this moment we suspect it’s an illusion, with hints found in the juxtaposition between what excites the retina and Rilke’s interpreted world between the madness out there we presume exists and the carefully cultivated peace within our souls there’s a mismatch, like the fissure on a surface that exposes an unimagined netherland a ghost in the machine the designers failed to catch that warns us what we see is not real I have the sense of it. an expectation half fear (of the unknown), half excitement of what it may turn out to be [4-IX-2020]