The Modern Leper by addsuns@deviantart.com

Polysyllabic platitudes of pensive prose performed per proper phraseology parameters
Quickly and quiescently quaffing quaint quietude
Rearranging relativity and rolling r’s to reflect refinement
Subtly stringing synonymous sentences in sequences surely
Trumping truth to triumphantly transcend transcendentalism
Understanding the ubiquity of uselessness
Veritably vegetating in varieties of vagabond
Wordsmithing willingly whining without wrangling
Xerotically extracting xenomorphic and xenogametic xerocopies
Yearning yonderly yede yon to
Zen

Neil White, 2013

If you haven’t figured it out the poem basically says nothing, but it was a fun exercise in both form and vocabulary and I appreciate the number of sights out there dedicated to scrabble words and words starting with unusual letters. Enjoy my exercise in obfuscatory alliteration.

The Healing of Ten Leperes by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894)

To see or not to see, that is the question
‘Tis certainly easier to turn a blind eye to the walking wounded
Those passed by in the world’s turning and to ensure my standing
To consign them to some modern day leper’s colony
The unclean and the unseen

To see or not to see, that is the question
In a time where all the suffering of the world pours in digitally
It would be so easy to disconnect from the groaning of the world
And to blame the victim for the suffering they cause me
The untouchable and the unwanted

To see or not to see, that is the calling
The world around me calls me not to see, not to care, not to believe it matters
The kingdom calls for eyes that see and ears that hear with soft hearts
To see Christ in the victim and God in the suffering
The crucified and the scandalous

Yet many who should see are blind
And among the ones who see are those who seem to come from a different fold
In all of it the kingdom is there in the midst of us, in the love and hate
In the midst of real lives and real stories
The seen and the unseen

Neil White, 2013

A change in the environment, a new home, a new office, new people
Transitions with the potential for new opportunities new beginnings
Yet, they also come with numerous challenges to be navigated
For it means abandoning that which you knew, the routines you valued
The stores you shopped in, the arrangement of the kitchen
Everything changes as a new equilibrium is sought, new relationships established
And though I would like the world to stop while I catch up, it spins on
Blind to the transitions and those caught within them

Neil White 2013

Jumping through hoops to please some unseen watcher

Who holds the keys to stability, dangling them before my nose

As I frenetically attempt to clear every obstacle

Placed in my path without stumbling in the process

Or as I wait patiently as yet one more set of challenges

Are lined up for my betterment and safe-keeping

Even when I run the course in record time

I wait upon the unimpressed administrators who set the clock

Speeding up and then slowing down the process with arbitrary freedom

Ensuring that we know I am never in control of my own fate

Neil White, 2013

This emerges out of the process of closing on a house (still ongoing) which has at times felt like a circus and has definitely left me feeling out of control and dependent upon others. I’m sure the words can also point to broader realities but it emerges out of a specific one.