The Highest Form of Flattery
Flattery that flows like flowers unbounded by a field,
Flattery that grows, unhindered.
Flattery that flies around you in circles.
Has there ever been a room filled with people Where flattery of one form or another was not in flight?
I love your dress. Nice car. I like your smile.
You have a great sense of humor.
You are very smart.
You have a nice family. You husband is handsome. You wife is pretty.
And even if we were not any of these things,
Who upon hearing them uttered would disagree?
Who is brave enough, honest enough, to take
Up the torch to the cause against one’s self.
You cannot catch flattery or follow to where it goes.
We do not know where it lives, or if it is a mask or the underlying face.
When flirting with flattery there is no way to
Life into the grounded in the words spoken to us.
A few unkind words uttered at the wrong time can
Topple towers years in the making inside our selves.
Bricks of words, walls of perception, this is how to see
the self, not through our own eyes but through another’s eyes.
Inflated with our flatteries, we forget that rarely are
They directed at us. Often they are to gain some advantage over us.
But the highest form of flatter does not fold over on itself.
The highest form of flattery is a brick whose mortar does not relent.
The highest form of flattery does not fly away, but flies into our lap
And makes its dwelling permanent.
Subverting the Ordinary
Because ordinary things do not
Pulse with the same electricity
Do not sing the same songs
Do not find the same untempered temper
Do not steal the breeze of night and put
It into a jar only to shatter it on the unkept
Sidewalk of the ordinary’s own subversion.
Here, outside the realm of what is,
Within the realm of what could be
Is the realm of all things free.