26 Mar 2014 · 15:33
Tonight the flaming hoops story is new. The tigers have rewritten the script.
The vampires can feel something is up. They swarm to the ticket office.
The tent has a maximum capacity.
This is one show no one is keen to miss.
No one will miss it. It will be pirated and sold on.
That is always the way. They will make the copy worthwhile.
This night, yesss, this one, there will be blood.
A great deal of blood.
The ringmaster just doesn’t know it yet.
The lions have yet to weigh in.
They have thus far remained silent, detached.
That is the luxury of a lion’s say-so in today’s world.
Watch out for what the lions discuss when no one is watching.
They have evolved from circus freaks into machines bred for the bullet.
How advanced is Natural technology? They are under no illusions.
They will always be King of the Jungle.
Go and ask Mowgli. He will tell you what is what.
The vampires bring their progeny to a show such as this.
It is worth the corruption of their young souls.
To see the wild win for a change will lift morale.
The children will bay like wolves. It is their instinct.
The dogs will not perform well if their slot is after that of the cats.
The baying of wolves will unsettle their senses.
For the first time, they will feel divided. It makes sense to divide a pack.
It confuses the master.
The Master. The vampires snigger into their sleeves.
Now that was funny.
What would excite the patrons was the blood-trade spectacle.
It would bring the animals’ eyes alive. It would be best if the hoops were afire.
That would add atmosphere.
If the ringmaster left the gate ajar, that would add atmosphere.
Once he was dead, beheaded, what stood between the angry cats and man?
Vampires in human form die human deaths. That was the dare.
It was their choice to visit the circus on a wild Friday night.
At moonrise it will become clear who sleeps, who wakes.
The tigers have made sure of that.
The fact that the ringmaster came back disappoints many of the circus performers.
Their sentence seemed shorter the other way, when the circus ran itself.
Not to worry. After the cats come the clowns.
They would make everyone smile. It was their job.
They were paid to clown around, so they must clown.
They had better bring the house down.
If they failed, they would be fired. A simple understanding between puppets and master.
Master. The clowns grumble his status into cupped palms that they fling wide, sideways.
They throw out the name with determination. A curse to be rid of.
Send it out. Out. OUT. There is no space in the tent for curses.
The animals can hear their dense man-whispers. The hiss of spit hitting dry hands.
Circus people were superstitious with good reason. Be careful what you summon.
The curses must stay outside.
They are on the naughty step until they learn the first aspect of values.
The gypsy sits outside in her painted caravan. It rests on the backs of two pitch horses.
The red looks good against their black.
She reads for people. Whoever, whatever. She follows the circus and she speaks out.
‘Cross my palm with gold,’ is what she wants to say, with a wink.
She says deadpan, ‘Five bucks, fifty.’
It is not just the wild animals whose eyes have died.
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Tagged as bay, beheaded, blood, bred for the bullet, bring the house down, capacity, caravan, cats, children, circus freaks, clowns, corruption, curse, dead, died, divide, dogs, fail, fifty, fired, five bucks, flaming hoops, Friday night, gold, gypsy, horses, King of the Jungle, lift morale, lions, luxury, machines, master, Mowgli, Natural technology, naughty step, no illusions, palm, pirated, progeny, puppets, reads, ringmaster, say-so, sleep, souls, tent, The Circus, the way, ticket office, tigers, today's world, values, vampires, wake, wild, wild animals, win, wolves, young
29 Nov 2013 · 14:47
As far as hellfire goes, I would not lose too much sleep over the thought that your ‘sins’ in life are going to have landed you in a pit of fire for eternity. That isn’t what happens. In anycase, when you are dead, you do not feel. You could sit in a cauldron of boiling water all day. Your burning happens while you are living. That is what conscience is. That is also what dumb public opinion is. A branding. Should it be negative opinion that follows your happenings – and your management of those happenings – you will feel the burn. That burn is what you learn from. It is not often easy to be thankful to those who cause you to burn in this life, in fact it is most often the desire of those under fire to do some serious damage to the person or institution doing the burning. However. There is always the charitable process of instant forgiveness via the grace of God – if that way is for you. Or – you tolerate the burn and try to understand what is causing the friction in your days.
If you should find that it is you that is causing friction for yourself because you are being an arsehole in life – and again, both men and women qualify as arseholes – then you must accept the burn. You allocate to yourself your suffering. You will burn until you are made humble enough to realise that the way you think and the way you behave towards others does matter. You will burn until you adjust your attitude to include the understanding that everything you do in life is measured. Every single thing. If you are feeling friction because external prejudice is criticising you or your choices, you need to distance yourself from the idiots who practice that prejudice. Burning because you are gay, for instance, is unacceptable. Burning because you dare to follow your heart? That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life. Who dares persecute a person who decides to follow what might appear to the masses to be an ‘unconventional’ path in their pursuit of purpose? Convention, as a norm, is a load of shit – and tradition is not much better. They both confine dreams, thinking. Tradition and convention are constructs. Reconstruct them.
There are those who enjoy burning. And there are those who enjoy being on fire. Leave them be. It depends what you have been trying to achieve with your life as to how close you will have ventured to the flames and how long you will have exposed yourself to their heat. Fire is transformative, no matter how you look at it. The hotter your spot – and we all know what hot means – the more corrective your karma. That is such a simple concept to understand. Let karma play out the way it must. It has your best interests at heart.
And keep in mind that for a phoenix, fire is necessary for rebirth. For rising. In the same way the burn caused by your conscience is necessary. If you have no conscience, know that you are going nowhere.
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Tagged as arsehole, attitude, burn, burning, conscience, convention, dead, eternity, forgiveness, friction, gay, God, heart, hellfire, karma, phoenix, prejudice, public opinion, rebirth, rising, tolerance, tradition, unconventional
17 Oct 2013 · 09:11
Night time at The Circus is the most exciting.
It is when the vampires come to watch. They lust for blood.
They know the wild comes out at night.
There is fire.
The Circus is in a fortunate position. Its blood-trade is spectacle.
Its lineage, too. That is why it is fortunate.
It can pull crowds with its people.
The circus people are like fairground people.
There are none like them.
Luckily for the wild animals The Circus can soon excuse them from service.
Most human beings understand their plight.
Their ‘wildness’ has worn off, anyway. They are tarnished. Has-beens.
Where is the magic in a has-been? If you are honest you will admit there is none.
If you are not convinced then take time to walk around after the show.
Peruse the cages. The stakes.
Notice the eyes of the wild animals. They are dead.
Know that is because they no longer dream.
The subject of the ringmaster is bound to come up. He is a hot topic.
He has begged off again, citing a scratch from one of the big cats.
An infection. Perhaps he will die of tiger?
More likely he will die of scorn. Or rumours.
Whichever, one more no-show and he is out.
There is a three-strike rule for ringmasters.
Of course there is his understudy. There is always an understudy.
Luckily a voice-over is a voice-over no matter who presents.
The ringmaster’s absence does not mean The Circus does not run.
It just manages itself differently.
The wild animals get a night of zoo-treatment. They do not get a night off.
Flashing cameras. Squeals. Pussy-pussy-pussy.
Watch the elephants rocking. Back and forth, back and forth.
They are not dancing, no. They are screaming.
For their captors these screams are not good news.
For the ringmaster, a depression with the elephants is especially bad news.
He is the clown when they refuse later to work for his voice.
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Tagged as big cats, blood, dead, dream, elephants, exciting, fire, lineage, lust, magic, night, people, ringmaster, rumours, scorn, screaming, The Circus, The ringmaster, The wild animals, understudy, vampires, wild, zoo
15 Mar 2013 · 12:03
Inspiration is powerful. It motivates you to act. Feeling inspired does not mean sitting dreaming about possibilities. It means sitting and dreaming, of course, but it means more than that. It means doing something with the energy generated by your ideas. Good ideas create good vibes. Bad ideas do not. Bad ideas sometimes supercede good ideas. It happens. That is because a bad idea is usually disguised as a good idea in the head of the thinker. It is astounding what you can convince yourself of if you are determined. Use your inspiration to inspire others. What greater gift can you give the world? Inspire your colleagues by being the positive guy. Inspire your family by being real. Watching somebody be real is a privilege. It is a pity we do not do it more often. It is a good way to show respect for ourselves and regard for another person.
Expiration is equally powerful. It is the opposite of inspiration but it does not feel like it is. It does not feel like demotivation and it does not feel too much like breathing, either. To me, it feels like death. We expire, eventually. When we have done what we were sent to do on this planet, we die. Try not to be sentimental about death. It happens all the time. There is no point in fearing it. It is a freedom. It is a state we should learn to understand better, not dread. We have become a little too precious about death in the 21st century, despite our being bombarded with terminal facts and figures that defy reason and belief. Death is in our faces every day. What we learn is that we are alive, then we are not. Death is life. We should not hang on too tightly to the departed – as hard as that can be – we must let them move on without us because our possessiveness hinders their ability to leave this material plane. Do not cause your loved ones to have to wait forever for you to be over them, because they will wait for as long as you need them. Let them go forwards. They have a path that needs travelling, they have their own footprints to find. They have their own karmas to meet. Remember that when you are dead you do not feel sad for the living. You do not feel. Those of us left behind, feel. That is life. If we can realise that being dead is not a punishment, we can evolve. Dead is simply where you end up after being alive. How you die is what is important. We should all aspire to dying in our sleep – that is a treasure unlike any other.
We keep a spirit alive by letting it breathe through us. Do not be selfish with your breathing. When you speak of the dead, try to speak of them with love. It is a good thing for you and it is a good thing for them. The dead are best pleased to hear words of love. They are no different to the living.
C.J. Birch
C.J. Birch 