I saw him hanging there on the tree;
His once slim neck broken, swung free.
No one likes to admit this possibility:
a man’s life swinging on a tree.
– Steven Craig Hickman ©2014 Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited.
The Dark Fantastic: Literature, Philosophy, and Digital Arts 
“Here we are watching on as earth goes under,
and her child humanity expires before the dark truth;”
A lovely and extremely true expression.
A very sad, yet realistic story. I too once had a dear friend
who took her own life – leaving children and a husband —-
who I need to bury and give back to the earth, her mother.
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Yes, I was thinking of climate change and our portion within the production of it, and how this is contributing to many of the issues surrounding the Sixth Extinction that has been triggered because of it: ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, erosion, soil depletion, great barrier reefs dying, etc. And, that is just climate, not even bringing in all the other aspects of war and genocide, religious strife and bigotry, the rich and Hollywood lifestyles of the top 1% that exposes the gross imbalance in the world, the drug criminalization both of 3rd World and the International Banking systems that launder their money…
I could spend hours describing in detail all the various aspects that are going into the demise of the human species both as a moral and logical enemy of its own kind…. and, then we’d have to speak of just the madness of civilization itself; or, of the type of civilization we’ve developed across the globe based on domination and exploitation rather than partnership and equalitarian values….
But in the end one has to do something with all that information…. and time is running out!
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Men Kind is often suicidal these days because we have to find a new order to life with our Gia. The ingredients to do so are time and confronted stories and scenarios. When man and women becomes older , they might less concerned for them selves but the more for their children. The only sadness what left me is that I am not able to offer my children that time when I was a happy child. They have to find a new order and they will find it. Lucky I am ,to experience my four children in finding a happy future. But I realize that others are not so lucky the way I am. Let us accept ‘suicidal’ rather then a deny when people or living creatures wanna step out. They are signals for this change which we have to accept. Unfortunately due to our culture and dogmas printed in over time, we are to often denying this act of evolution. I don’t deny in such a way it strengthens me to be part of this happy evolution.
your image presents to me all of this , The river which I am part of it , flows and keep flowing with our without me. The tree slows down the impression and refers to the past for those who can not follow. The tree is the capture over time which I observed during a float on the river. A very powerful Image you have created Craig. I am happy that it gave me that impression .
Maybe I am impolite and I do apologize. All our friends here which press ‘like’. Why did they do this so virtual. Forgive me, I don’t wanna be rude but only content wise and meaningful alive. Bart
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Hi Bart:
Yes, this is all true. If we just take the notion of suicide itself and trace it back into history we discover that in some cultures it was acceptable and also just a part of existence in the tribes way of life. I’ve studied it myself trying to understand why my father took this path. He developed cancer which was something he dreaded. Not so much the cancer but the pain… And, I think this is the key: pain can be the most difficult aspect that we as fully aware and conscious beings go through as we are dying.
I also had a good friend as described in the poem. But will not go further here…
We seem to put a moral tinge on it because of two-thousand years of Judeo-Christian-Muslim monotheisms as being sinful and wrong… but this was not true of the cultures of Greece or Rome or the Celts and other tribes around the planet….
Many factors come into play. For ancient tribes when the being who was the caregiver or provider for a group died, and there was no other to take this person’s place tribes (not all but some) would declare all members of that group, family, etc. as dead while alive. They became outcasts and were left to fend for themselves as best they could in the elements. For us in our time this seems cruel and unjust. But for the tribe as a unit to survive meant that they could not bare the responsibility of extra mouths to feed unless someone took up that initiative.
I think of the battles over such people as Dr. Kevorkian, etc. Or assisted suicide. When you think about it this is already being don in some respects with what is termed Hospices. Recently my mother at 86 passed away. There came a point when she was no longer able to maintain her own breathing and was in such pain that keeping her a prisoner in the feeding tubes, breathing masks, etc. became even in the doctors eyes just one long nightmare for her to bare at her age.
So the way the system works in the U.S.A. is that once a patient is deemed uncompliant, unable to support her own physical survival without the aid of machines it is up to the next of kin to decide which path to take. One could continue this horror show or else take her off these support systems and allow her to die naturally in comfort with either no or some medicines like morphine, etc. to ease her going… we chose this path. I’ll not go into details but the medication kept her in an almost coma state after. She went peacefully.
So the forms of death we find acceptable seem to vary according to cultures. Humans seem unable to accept their finitude and struggle to attain differing forms of immortality. I know certain writers such as Norman O. Brown and Ernst Becker and Kubler-Ross helped me to understand this angel better….
Our views of those moral climes of the afterlife with all the imagery that poets such as in at least the West in Dante, Milton or others have left us we seem to populate the blankness with visions of paradise or hell… atheists would see it as emptiness and vacancy… the notion of a natural life that just is what it is in a natural realm of cycles… that nothing really dies and is part of the cosmos and goes back to it at death… no reason for it, just the way of life, etc.
So, again, so many notions contribute to this… as a poet I was expressing a typical aspect of it in and through the patterns of natural imagery.
thanks…
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