Social Contract
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- Social Contract
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Elaine Elizabeth Belz
SOCIAL CONTRACT
Under the ethereal haze of fluorescent tube lighting fermenting in a liquid base of cigarette smoke and stagnant air that has become the shared content of all our lungs
dizzying scenes of human interaction and boredom and distraction and countless miscellaneous encoded expressions combine to form an isolating wall of Plexiglas
too transparent to allow me to ignore the world it separates me from
too blurred to let me understand
this random mess imposed on a framework of assumed order, these loose elements somehow unified, by noise, or by action, or perhaps by mere proximity
while all apparent contact terminates on surfaces of skin, of eyes, of the barriers that shape us
into individuals, define us by what we are not. This too we share in common, we
flickering bits of smoldering ash still huddling for warmth around the chaos lingering in the afterglow
of the Big Bang.
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Formatting doesn't come through. Each line/stanza is like a little paragraph. I usually put it on paper as a hanging indent.
If anyone wants to discuss the philosophy in here, I would be delighted—comment below! :)
And...can you spot the scene from Ionesco in here?
This was from my first book, Deciphering Scars (1997)
SOCIAL CONTRACT
Under the ethereal haze of fluorescent tube lighting fermenting in a liquid base of cigarette smoke and stagnant air that has become the shared content of all our lungs
dizzying scenes of human interaction and boredom and distraction and countless miscellaneous encoded expressions combine to form an isolating wall of Plexiglas
too transparent to allow me to ignore the world it separates me from
too blurred to let me understand
this random mess imposed on a framework of assumed order, these loose elements somehow unified, by noise, or by action, or perhaps by mere proximity
while all apparent contact terminates on surfaces of skin, of eyes, of the barriers that shape us
into individuals, define us by what we are not. This too we share in common, we
flickering bits of smoldering ash still huddling for warmth around the chaos lingering in the afterglow
of the Big Bang.
----------------------------------------------
Formatting doesn't come through. Each line/stanza is like a little paragraph. I usually put it on paper as a hanging indent.
If anyone wants to discuss the philosophy in here, I would be delighted—comment below! :)
And...can you spot the scene from Ionesco in here?
This was from my first book, Deciphering Scars (1997)
