Resistance
- Image Credit: TS Rogers
I had a nightmare about pacmen shooting at me; they were shouting – Resistance is futile! resistance is futile. Clearly the product of a fevered brain that’s spent too much time trying to write both the fall of Vietnam and September 11th into the same chapter! I needed a break. This is what came out – Resistance IS futile. Made worse if one is resisting because of unquestioning patriotism, absolute loyalty. Made worse in the creative process by being too attached to one particular idea, not allowing new ideas to filter in …
Have you been trapped by resistance? Leave a comment about how you handled it?
Resistance
resistance IS
a matter of men in the underbrush
who don’t know when to give up
an old samurai in the jungle
who didn’t hear
the emperor’s paper thin whisper to put down arms
an eon ago
the wood termites went at him the other day
the bones left after the maggots finished with the flesh …
… not much of that
he starved to death
sometime someday no one knows when
I see an animal
living in the now
digging up sweet potatoes
foraging for jungle yam
one day a bird falls on him
dead from some sickness
it doesn’t kill him
the brittle bird body cracking in his mouth
in the same way
we’re not diminished
stepping on that last century skull
while discovering the primeval jungle
on vacation for the summer
nor is the new emperor
eating scones and drinking tea
in japan
Reader and Writer - Praying Woman - Gardener - Foodie 
It’s interesting to think of Steven Pressfield’s idea of resistance, which is what I associat that word with now, and the resistance soldiers of… I’m assuming this is the Japanese soldiers after World War II? Anyway, it’s interesting.
I love the narrative quality of this poem, “the brittle bird body cracking in his mouth.” That’s a particularly bright spot.
And the way you move around in time to put everything in scope. This is a very strong poem.
You’re very insightful! This poem is indeed a metaphor for “resistance” of the sort that destroys our ability to create … the men in the underbrush holding on useless loyalties … starving their creativity to death. Another type of resistance, that we just walk on and don’t care… or continue going on with our comfortable lives ….