Ghost Pepper
Forget about the outcome and stop touching your eyes. We are all guilty of tolerating the closet moth; an old memory that besets wise council with thistles. Nostalgic belly rubs will not reverse a thing. No meaningful bond can be established with the destroyer. Check your hands to confirm my truth. They are covered in lacerations. Nuzzle up to the withered history you forced into a north star and see if that grows back your dead nerves. This path continues where the railing stops and the street paint disappears. Will you be the first to speak sweetly to a whirlwind or to saddle a great deluge? Please do not play the fool through the lure of moderation. There is no peace within a healthy spinal column. Every sensation behaves as a friend until life suddenly unveils consciousness as an artist restricted to poison colors. Is it even possible to render an image without killing something important? The misuse of pleasure is semantic devilry, and I partly think we don't care. It always goes the same way. No prefix in the world can alter the power of a slow grinding pressure. Yet no man will appraise his varied pursuits as nutritionally sapped cud. Were it not for vanity, I suspect no one could survive perils and disgrace of bovine digestion. Also, it is my preference to be spare of sage advice. Name an ancient verity I am ignorant of, or some new revelation that has shaken up human understanding. I am not lacking discernment, so no offense should be entertained when I instruct our willful march onto the blue tongue of a cosmic cow. Let it happen. We have tied our biology in knots for uninvited circumstances to climb up with ease. We only pretend to be taken by surprise. However, frustration demands an immediate out, and renunciation is an exquisite spice absent a rack. It is a clever game played inside of the more obvious one, but Hot Potato does not work when you are the meat in the stew. Any abandoned habit of a ruinous nature simply flavors the boiling water in which you simmer. Call to mind the old feast days of a medieval style. A pig served with an apple in his mouth was an admonition. Only spiritual dullness chalks that presentation up to culinary charm. But why should I catalogue the most hateful paradox of pleasure and pain? It's not like I mean to devise an intervention. No semi-circle of trusted friends and family members can stop this tragic dance. If loves ones came in a soft gel, every stomach would require activated charcoal. All will unfold as it must. No tomato rejoices over being cut in half, but if you threaten to dice it, the troubled fruit will fetishize a harvest sickle making no connection to it's present torment. It orgasmed over being washed and basketed unaware of death's pageantry. We want to be picked without being eaten, but the world has other plans. Tell me what sooths you so that a quarter inch may be added to it for total enslavement. Stoics abhor the hedonic scavenger hunts of virtue sick peoples. Yet this sort of hatred has never felt so satisfying. To lick scorn off the fingers with delight is the sign of one who has eaten well from the wrong plate. None can escape this coin toss that proceeds the question. Neutralize the burn when possible, and stagger all schedules of gratification. It is the best I can offer.
