The Curse of Crocodile Gratitude

i feel your

crocodile life

belly low slung, swaying

conquest trophy

i feel your

crocodile lie

pleasing

of Crocodile Gratitude

Is a sorrow, a sorrow, if the tears are crocodile tears? Is a courage, a courage, if the heart is a crocodile heart?

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I should tell a story.

That accomplishes what?

A play? A script?

How doubtful, a medium of crocodile tears to answer the question of crocodile tears.

A speech!

At a microphone, is there a difference between a speech by the author and a speech by the author of the author?

Of course, a poem. Surely, a song.

So a narrative isn't a narrative, when it's not in narrative form?

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What about a letter? An interview? Or a post? How all the rage, a medium of crocodile hearts to answer the question of crocodile hearts.

What about a headline? An account? Or a testimony? How vive du jour, a crocodile crocodiles in statements witnessed.

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It is effortless, crocodile tears that say: I weep, I weep. It is painless, crocodile hearts that say: I bleed, I bleed.

To spot the crocodile is to spot the hay in a haystack.

Do you know? Which hay is the crocodile in a haystack? Do your peers, your so and so, your own know? Which haystack isn't a haystack at all?

I should tell a curse:

more power to you.

To be the hay in a haystack means to be like all the others but only skin deep. Taught by life in childhood that acceptance and fairness is skin deep: How long before every child's acceptance and fairness is skin deep too? How long before swaths and masses, communities and civilizations, are populated and colonized by haystacks that are crocodilestacks? How long before the hay that is the crocodile is yourself and everyone else because that's what it means to be like all the others?

The Curse

On this season of gratitude, I'm grateful for crocodile tears, crocodile hearts. I'm grateful for drip drop, tick tock. I'm grateful, skin deep.

For anything but would rob me

of how good, how good, how good it feels to drip drop crocodile tears, to tick tock crocodile hearts, to skin deep gratitude.

 

Addendum

The Curse of Crocodile Gratitude is the curse of appearances.

Of what's sacrificed, when what matters isn't substance, when what matters is trivial. That is, when what matters is the appearance of civility, what's lost is the point. For the point of civility is not fake politeness or fake friendship or fake kindness, though this is the kind of politeness and friendship and kindness that is taught to every child and practiced. The point of civility is mutuality.

Such that when what matters isn't mutuality, when what matters is the façade of mutuality, what's missing is sincerity.

This is what you and I feel.

When every degree of superficial difference between us is experienced visibly and palpably, we feel insincerity, whether the difference is across our politics, religion, gender, income, or so on.

We often criticize such insincerity as hypocrisy, even as we exercise hypocrisy too.

After all, is every one of you authentic with everyone? That is, do you feel a mutuality with every human being on the other side of every degree of superficial difference between us? Do you feel a humility?

Or is what you and I feel, good that a pretense of dignity is good enough? That, but for performative respect, as heartfelt as playacting, we would be at war?

 

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The Curse of Crocodile Gratitude is the curse of what's not special.

Differences aren't what's special about us. What's special about us is our capacity and will to recognize and acknowledge that differences don't matter, not really. 

What?

When differences are our everything, from our identity to our pride, we reject our obligation to shrug off visible and palpable realnesses of differences to cooperate. Never mind, what is there to cooperate towards together, when we feel no humbleness towards the different? Never mind, differences are no more accepted and fair, than realnesses of differences are visible and palpable.

What?

To the extent that the future is the consequence of our cooperation or lack thereof, directing our energy, resources, and bandwidth towards what's not real and what's not true, robs us of tomorrow to satisfy the present and we who seize lanes and appropriate flagpoles with the impunity of make believe.

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The Curse of Crocodile Gratitude is not the curse of enemies.

It's the truth that reaping what we sow isn't specific and judicious. That is, the covenant that forgives all doesn't spare believers of such covenants from tomorrow. In other words, what we don't cooperate towards today, will bear fruit that engages hostilities tomorrow.

Such that, should we wish for a tomorrow that fulfills hope for something more real than make believe, the seeds we plant cannot double down on fictions that feel too good, too good, too good to be true.

M

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Author's Note

Love is not a solution. Not when love is for the loved and hate is for the hated. Not when what is coveted is crocodile life and what is despised is all that repudiates greed and pride and vanity.

 For greed and pride and vanity are what crocodiles live and lie and love for.

M