IMPOVERISHINGED-ING:the sunging of the preying mantis
as we’re blindly stumbling on
I’m feeling a cold wind blowing
and taking what little there’s left
for us to wrap here around us
I’m seeing wet glossy eyes trying to cry
and long empty arms reaching out for themselves
and words lost here in the echoes
I’m smelling the oily odor of unwashed lives
doused in perfumes costumes and mobile tombs
filed in cold and lonely rooms
I’m lamenting the many times in temperate climes
when those things warm and easily won
are tossed away and left undone
Copyright © 1988, 2020 Asili Ya Nadhiri
The suffix ‘ing-ed-ing’ is a linguistic construct specific to the literary genre called “Tonal Drawings Written in Poetic Form.” The term Impoverishinged-ing is a sketch describing the manner in which we humans so are robotically and enthrallingly cultivating our spiritual, moral, and intellectual demise: how the manner in which we are always acting upon, being acted upon, and always in the horizon of becoming is decisively invisiblizing/extinguishing us.
Imitating and emulating one another is a means by which we assist our social evolution; and a very important agent in this endeavor. But, this behavior like all our others is also essential in our existential invisiblizing, when it is being clung to as a primary means by which we are able to avoid taking ownership of the person whose reflection we are seeing in the mirror—and the eyes of our fellow beings. Now, we are allowing ourselves to be enthralled by a few others (THEMMMS) who are designating themselves as the ordained models for this most diabolical camouflaging. Of course, we are those THEMMMs through whose lives we are so slavishly trying to be vicariously living, are, in fact, doing the same thing, too—and just as desperately.
Beginning very early in our childhood we naturally engage in this imitating of others most enthusiastically; and, normally, expect and insist as we mature that this normal propensity is diminishing as our biological tenue on earth is doing likewise. Why then, are we are so persistently and desperately trying to be obsessively holding onto and aggressively propagating this behavior on and on ad infinitum?
the prey is always
preying too
swallowing one’s tail
is never through
and not the answer
for what to do
We are always in the crosshairs of our choosing. Everything is always everythinging: always drummming in the rhythming of what everything else is drummming. By means of ourselves, we’re always revealing the human dynamics generating impoverishinged-ing. This novel is attempting to lay bare the dynamics of this aggressively and progressively developing swallowing human proclivity.
The setting is a small southern coastal tobacco town we’re calling Abidenton. This is a small society, wherein, there is a much smaller society, wherein, is there are much smaller societies. Abidenton society, as a whole, is ensconcing mind, body, and soul in a geographical region boasting the cultural dynamics of the progressingly larger municipalities of which is is a part—albeit with a little drawl ya’ll. But, do not fall prey to the notion that small towns are nothing vis-à-vis large metropolitian areas: This notion is valid only if we are focussed on population and area. By means of this milieu, drawing is trying to lay bare the dynamics of this aggressively and progressively consuming existential reality we are calling IMPOVERISHINGED-ING.
Copyright © 2019 Asili Ya NadhiriI
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