Annotations

I bike and bus to work everyday. On the bus I do my pleasure reading. This morning I just finished The Inner Journey: Views from the Hindu Tradition edited by Margaret H. Case. The book is a collection of articles from the exceptional periodical Parabola, http://www.parabola.org/. There are at least two other Inner Journey volumes, maybe more.

Coming home I reviewed all my annotations and poetic sketches. Here are a couple of things I liked:

A proverb(?):
Excessive piousness is a cloak of evil.

An image (originally written in stevespell, but this normspell version loses little of the innuendo):
O plagues of Egypt, o boils and sores!
What punishments are these and who am I to suffer?
I who glory in my works,
Who elevate myself. Holy am I,
Who strip the earth in my conquests.
Mine, all this is mine!
Now I am exposed in my doings.
My self-awareness all boils and sores.
I, Pharaoh, in defeat return to my palace
With the cowards who stood at the edge of the sea
And would not plunge into war.
I return and my slaves jeer,
My maidens turn away. What am I?
I cast myself down on the silk sheets,
On my downy bed. My crimson blood
Seeps into the subtle, elegant weave
And warp of my private places.