Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Why I Am Not Bertrand Russell ~ Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Behind closed doors, locked shut, shuttered windows, a boy grows smaller and smaller

Even if he were huge, gigantic, a monster on the outside, inside

He grew smaller, quiet, a sensitive, little man without a future

In his soul, everyday he died, he could not cry, he could only holler

Not unlike a banshee, mourning the loss of life, no tears, only a wail

Defiant and piercing, his voice could shatter glass, so he was locked away

Cloistered in a bunker, underground, without light, hidden deep in the dark

Little Mumble Bunny learned to sing, perfect pitch and tempo, he felt pride

Only as a eunuch could his family sustain their lifestyle, a rupture

Shook their world with silence, his sadistic brother was forced to taste the spark

Enlightening lightning, kensho to satori, Mumble Bunny set sail

Dark days he left behind, behind closed doors, locked shut, windows shuttered, to say

Demons haunted his nights, angels guided his days, slept at dawn, woke at dusk

Of course, he was compared with a vampire in looks, his diaphanous skin

Ordinarily dark, grew pale over the years, life in the deep, blue sea

Remained silent for fish, darkness swallowed his voice, he could no longer busk

Silence taught him lessons, he learned to meditate, one night he met a djinn

Little Mumble Bunny read books voraciously, Modernist poetry

Only the djinn preferred John Donne to Eliot, Lao Tse to Ezra Pound

Campbell Kimball Russell, also known as "C. K." or the Mumble Bunny

Kin were no longer in, so the Mumble Bunny became C. K. by name

Eventually, C. K. learned to enunciate, his friends found it funny

Despite his unchosen nickname, "Mumble Bunny" no longer felt the same

Silence was not a grave, assaulting the senses in darkness without sound

Hungry for acceptance outside of his family, his complicit parents

Understanding nothing of children or childhood, except trauma and pain

Torture was de rigueur, the family discipline put in practice to ground

Sinister family rules into strict discipline, privilege for the first born

Hungry for acceptance, C. K. became "Russell", over time, he presents

Underhanded people to his warrior self, but with nothing to gain

The Book of Life opened slowly before his eyes, for years he felt their scorn

The Father and the Son, the Mother and the Ghost, his long-deceased sister

Ever since he was born, his parents treated him like their dead baby girl

Rehearse entitlement for his older brother, the favored son, their love

Equal but separate for their two sons living totally different lives

Deceased sister aside, the first born son knows all, how bees thrive in their hives

When a window opens, a door to the past shuts, God looks down from above

In the eyes of the Lord, C. K. felt unworthy, compared to the black pearl

No one but his brother, the lion in the sun,
his mane, golden glister

Defend perpetrators when it's only in fun, charming beyond the harm

Older children bully, harass, shake down, and haze younger siblings for fun

What if latch-key kids felt loved and not neglected, C. K. could not disarm

Sinister sister, ghost of household influence, affluent as the sun

A boy grows like an oak, bespoke suit for college graduation, too late

Bumble Mumble Bunny with marbles in his mouth spoke truth against trauma

Only his parents laughed and banished him downstairs in their dingy basement

Yet somehow he survived childhood, entered college, studied Classics, his fate

Generates connections, genealogy charts, the myth of Plato's cave

Reformed shadows observe sunlight for the first time, down in the basement, he knew

Only darkness, terror, the evil parents do, too tired to love and care

Worthless, invisible on the inside, outside... a part of the drama,

Sound and silence, siblings surround Mumble Bunny in order to dement

Scramble his brain with fear until body and mind drop away as they scare

Mumble Bunny to shrink, hide within emptiness, vast and boundless, a grave

As enormous as space without planets or stars, just a small boy who grew

Large enough not to be noticed by anyone, just a shell of a man

Living yet not alive, surviving as unfit to reproduce, no balls

Eunuchs of dysfunction murder the populace of possible infants

Religion cannot save a child from his siblings burning his soul, out of the frying pan

As he had three wishes offered by the old djinn, a pair of testicles

Nothing less than solving homelessness, poverty and loss of innocence

Drug and sex trafficking, global hunger, world peace, and global climate change

Since eight requests in one revealed his liberal bleeding heart, the djinn saw

Much to discuss, the boy now a middle-aged man, felt this was his last chance

As the rules of the game offer physical gifts only within a range

Legitimate for one person no matter who receives the gift, his jaw

Loosened and dropped, dismayed nothing would ever change, without a chance to dance

Eventually, C. K. decided to tackle these problems with a book

Rough draft to print copies took twenty years, he died before the world he shook

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