Secrets

These secrets are Promethean fire.

A path, a riddle, a jewel, an oath...which will you choose?

Those who answer the Sphinx incorrectly are torn to pieces and devoured.

Insiders, outsiders, guarding the unspeakable with circumlocutions, we draw boundaries round names. Transparency may tempt us, at times, yet we remain, with guilty gratitude, opaque.

Who controls this information? Who penetrates the enemy’s defences? Who is augmented and who is reduced?

What is open closes, what is closed opens-under the spell of a secret, a formula for creation and destruction, a chemical catalyst.

Bodily excretions, mental secretions...here goes another stab at definition, another attempt to put birds in cages.

The initiate is led through gloomy mazes, by vertiginous precipices, into a monster's den, a coven of torments. Until he reaches the Holy of Holies and the hallowed words.

I must have a confessor. Someone to show sympathy, someone to intrigue and shock, to manipulate with flaunted weakness and concealed strength. I name my temptations the better to resist them. Dear listener, will you interpret my indiscretions and guide me to release? I am here to seduce, to exploit, to elicit responses.

Invisible crimes infest the air. Who does not crave the exposure of justice? Who does not wish to unmask?

The devilish secret is stolen and then offered as a gift.Why, friend, are you reluctant to accept it? It is simply a trade, a property.

This gossip is a substitute for understanding. Not to reel at dangerous complexity. Not to blink and look again.

Did I exist? Did I have an effect? I dabbled in judgements, dealt a few blows, kept most things to myself.