No pain, no gain!
Who said that?
What a sadist!
Break the heart,
what do you want?
Blow the spirit,
does it come again?
Some may regenerate
like an inveterate clown
when some can’t take it
with the heartstrings pulled
tweaked, pinched, and torn
Till their souls refuse to stay
besieged, assaulted within.
So, never say once again
Pain is s necessary gambit
with stacks of aces hidden
because it simply isn’t
but a swaggering fiddlestick.
I believe history is a branch of literature full of events and stories made by artists and artificers weaving facts into myth, and vice versa, into a timeless tapestry of the world that was, is and will be. In that regard, Kipling is an artist who spins beautiful tales of how animals became what they look like into a poetic wheel of ear-delighting and cadenced words aided by gorgeous illustrations distinctively graceful and dazzlingly beautiful.
Kipling’s evolution of animals explains why they look the way they are, such as a Leopard with spots, a Carmel hump, and many more. The stories become a fable and a history of its kind. It’s a literary version of Darwin’s Origin of Species, the wonderful menageries of Man and Beast that cannot live alone despite the differences in species because we are the inhabitants of this world, Earth. But, above all the fantastic tales of wonder, the Cat’s tale stands out in the story and the subject. Kipling’s Cat is proud but not arrogant, independent but affectionate, and vain but graceful. It’s a cat who walks by himself, and everything is alike to him and nothing else. The Cat is a beautiful stranger even if he likes to be a family, a kind of forever loner, the Puss in Boots with a cowboy hat and an empty holster. Kipling’s writer’s eyes saw the romantic solitude in a cat, and the result is one poetic Cat that rhymes well like the graceful way cats do their amazing somersaults.
Just So Stories are not just for children even though it is classified in Children’s literature on the shelves of libraries. It’s a book for everyone who loves legends and magic, who still has a childlike innocence that refused to put away as an adult because it’s in nature. The stories are not for academic analysis or psychoanalysis but simply for the enjoyment of the mind and the delight of the heart. Remember Freud’s saying, “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.” So are Just So Stories, so delightful and so pleasant.
When a thirsty wayfarer
sees an oasis in the desert,
And a weary sailor beholds
the kingdom of shore distant,
the joyful tears of the beholders
remove the stains from the chamber
of the hearts furious of grift desire
And return them to the tender hearts.
The wandering
Rainmaker
A stranger
To her power
Invokes ever
A benevolent rain
Of inspirations
On an arid terrain
Of imaginations
That are blocked
In the Acheronian
Wilderness barren
Of wordlessness.
People living upstairs
With the power of means
To let you live or die
De facto or de jure
Have their sovereign parlance
A sign of class consciousness
That goes by saying thus:
“No offense. It’s just personal.
For work is work, and that’s that,”
As if it were a recitation
Of indemnifying themselves
From injuring the other’s soul
And absolving them of the offense
They have committed willingly.
People living downstairs
With the need for means
To live and not die
Physically and mentally
Have their sovereign credos
A sign of universal humanness
That bellows from within thus:
“No offense? It’s personal,
For I am not mechanical
Without sense and reason.
What is it, then, addressing me?
Is it nothing but a talking head?”
Such is an echo from the valley
Of the injured soul, weeping inside
Forcing to remind the values of stoicism
That works not for everyone’s soul.
Masters of slaves, transcendent of time
Slaves of masters, regardless of race
In different costumes, in changing scenery
Have kept their footings in their places
According to lots assigned by Wheel of Fortune;
Some say luck ensues from efforts and geniuses,
And many believe it so as though to numb the pains
From the ills of society, the reality at face value.
Nevertheless, work is personal in the guise
Of the professional that which even Adam Smith
The father of the Wealth of Nations affirmed
In the selfish human ego distilled in work;
“Nothing is personal” is, therefore, a fallacy
A res ipsa loquitur of illogical defense
Of offense on the hangers-on by the upper hands
Although they may refuse to agree with me
In the security of their infallible power to decide
The livelihood of those in need of their mercy.
There’s a class difference
In the kinds of racket
Whether you believe it or not.
The tennis racket’s patrician
The badminton racket’s plebeian
But no matter what they are
Their work is hard labor
Hitting, hit, swooshing, swooshed
All for the excitement of the spirits.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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