| The worst thing I've ever done I did when I was eight.
I had the purist rage as a child
My hatred was infinite and awesome and yet strangely full of pity.
My parents and teasing brothers were so cruel that they would make me leave the house clutching a magnifying glass in whitened fist. I would capture grasshoppers and while pinning them helplessly between my fingers I would focus the suns power and bring it to bear in all its neutrality on the unlidded multicelled eyeballs of my victims. There would be a whisp of vapour and a sudden darkening to black of a once funcioning insect head. But it was the struggle and the presumed pain that was my object because you see I wanted other things to suffer too. As a grown man, I still find myself suffering and I wonder if perhaps I have found a part of me that is that insect caught in that instant of focused light Head-hot and struggling © MARTIN EWEN 1998 |