Tyranny of Innocence

" A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism:215

Knowledge is a state:
a stark revelation.

More information,
never leads to answers,
but opens more
unanswered questions.

To remain ignorant
is often an excuse
foisted upon us,
tyrannically imposed,
as if ignorance offers
safety and protection.
The innocent:
idealized recluse.

For in learning,
as in living,
not having all the answers
is exactly the point.

Continuing to ask,
is continuing to care
and continuing to create,
is continuing to dare.

Ill Literate

Safest inside
a sentence
of declaration;
buried
beneath
words;
shoulder to shoulder
with footnotes
and annotations.

Least secure
in mid-conversation;
eye to eye
among
floating faces,
in introduction.

At the receiving end:
a glance,
inspection,
scrutiny:
intrusion.

Being seen
is an illusion;
being read,
revelation.

Primal Fear

Titled Titans
scare me the most.

So much more -
than vagrants,
greasy pick pockets,
who can rob me blind.

They who approach me
in stealth
somehow feel fear,
and often -
smell of it.

Ubermensch
with license to splay
my insides about,
they are:
untouched by disquiet,
beyond mercy,
above faith,
and often justified,
though more often:
lacking justice.