Death will blow my breath away
one day
Sooner than most
so they say
But
Perhaps a fascist takeover
will kill me
‘fore my heart wins out
and pulls me to the ground
Death will blow my breath away
one day
Sooner than most
so they say
But
Perhaps a fascist takeover
will kill me
‘fore my heart wins out
and pulls me to the ground
It was a hollow cry, for no one could ease the pain. She howled into the night, and he bellowed from the other side.
The crescent of the moon was spangled through the bare branches of the trees; winter had come too soon, that was what Blaze believed, but Willow said this was the way of things now.
Life was becoming death in an endless winter.
Blaze had asked Willow if she couldn’t try putting a more optimistic spin on things, but Willow said she lived truthfully; an optimistic spin would be a lie.
‘Are we to blame?’ Blaze had asked Willow.
Willow slumped down against the rotting trunk of a willow tree, ‘No.’ Willow said.
And Blaze could only believe her because she wouldn’t sugarcoat the truth.
‘Is it anyone’s fault?’
Willow looked around at the cracked earth beneath her feet; the sun was ablaze in the sky, but winter’s soul had shrouded the earth with only shadows of ghosts. And so no matter how much that sun provided its heat, the mass extinction had done its thing. And yes, one day, maybe, life would find its way again, but for now, all that was left was the debris of homosapiens.
Plastic yoghurt pots rolled across the barren land like tumbleweeds, plastic wrapped tightly around the bones of some long-lost animal suffocated from the very plastic that now waved in the wind.
‘I have found you,’ Blaze had told Willow as he held her against the stump of the tree, ‘and so you have found me.’
Willow had smiled sadly up into his broken stare. The lights of his eyes had long gone out, as had her own.
‘Let’s let ourselves go,’ Willow said softly to him, ‘together.’
‘But I thirst for life.’ Blaze had protested.
‘We will thirst forever.’ Willow’s neck creaked as she lowered her eyes.
Blaze held her tighter in his arms, ‘The sun gives us life; we are living.’
‘This is not living, Blaze.’
Willow loosened herself from his arms, ‘Take out my solar panel.’ Her neck creaked as she craned it to look back at Blaze.
‘I…I can’t.’ Blaze said.
‘You can.’
Blaze began to whir, his head shook, ‘No! No! No! No!’ His left eye drooped, and a shard of loose glass dropped onto the cracked earth.
Since that day, a gulf had separated them. Blaze wandered about the cracked, parched plains marching northward on the same journey the trees had tried to make. The scorched bark of trees flaked and clung to their skeletal remains.
Blaze ripped a flake of bark and crushed it in his hands; a poem sought itself out in the through the mess of his electronic neurosis:
I am a refugee marching north on the wind
hoping my seed will disperse
far enough to traverse
these boundaries that will surely kill me
my roots are not fed
and there is no life left
but the wound that has bled
into the rivers
tricking down into the earth.
I could have shaded you from the sun
and thus the wind and the cold
but you let the blood run
never mind the lives slain
all for your fear of death.
Does irony feed you and quench your thirst?
When will you march with the skeletal remains of us?
And it was then that he heard the great despair taking wing into the air. The hollow cry of a humanoid who had torn her solar panel, the dying embers opened her lips, and the cry rang out through the plains of extinction.
Blaze bellowed back, and the moon’s crescent looked on, indifferent.
If only I was a balloon
you could let go
and I could fall up
till snared by the branch of a tree
there I could hang free.
My despair has me embroiled
in so much deceit
staying alive
only for people to reach
This isn’t a life worth living
resentment is the moon
propelling the tides in my head
only sticking around
so others don’t have to think me dead
trying to die within
so I can be an animated memory
for those who claim me.
Let words fall from my lips
as empty as they may be
dead inside, but they won’t have to see
What can I say
I’m trying to stay
but how I hope something takes me away
I will take him into my mouth
to swallow this dirty truth
that innocence was only ever illusion
we were born as much of the dirt
as the water that cleanses us
in this cannibalistic earth
even if love does not mark the skin
only animalistic ruin
there is nothing more tender
than fucking.
I love the earth no more than I love myself
I want to eviscerate myself
as much as we have the earth
I want to kill the skeleton in my skull
gnashing its teeth
like a ghost without a home
masticating on its lonesomeness
in nightmares kept for times like this
I want to spill my guts
but the blade won’t cut deep enough
because, to be blunt
I’m a superficial cunt
Everything deflates me
including the rise of the sun
and in the air, writes the total sum
absolutely nothing
Keep me contained
between these beats
A contortionist
building a face
to hide the beast
Slither and writhe
under the sheets
our teeth, they grind
tongue twisted and tied
Bursting through button spines
a bloody ritual to feast the eyes
monsters created to mortify
preachers spitting to mobilise
they ‘hate’ it but, it’s time to crucify
In reflection, Dr Frankenstein
A slippery slope
phallic dream
another monster to contain
why have chains without a mob to entertain?
On the space station, there is another me in the flesh.
I am down here to explore the recovery of the earth or the lack thereof.
I have seen that the land is parched, and no life is in sight.
Any trees still standing are in the long drawn, out process of death and decay, leaning precariously.
I trailed a camera into the holes of such trees, and there was nothing.
Like staring into an abyss.
There was no life in that death.
This is not what death is supposed to be.
My big metal feet journey through vast expanses of land.
Death used to mean something, life. It meant life of some kind or other.
Now it means…nothing.
Which in turn makes life mean nothing.
And so up there myself in the flesh amongst others in their flesh, they are cocooned from the truth.
This is where I depart from myself, my soul, in the space station.
Where I become someone new.
We travelled different terrains, and new paths were forged inside ourselves.
He is of the flesh; I am of wheels, oil, plastics and metals.
‘Fox,’ Came the voice in my ear.
‘Max?’ I replied.
‘meet me at the mother tree.’
The mother tree is a huge colossus of a tree; it is dead. Its enormous girth leaning now to one side.
A massive hole within where even we humanoids can fit.
‘An earthquake or something is approaching,’ Max told me.
Earthquakes were common.
There were no birds, and my flesh self loves watching the birds in documentaries. My flesh self has never seen a real bird, nor have I.
He thinks one day he will be able to come back down to earth – in the flesh – and see the birds.
I don’t know what to tell you, Fox.
There are no birds, and none of our namesake either. I’m sorry.
I wish to tell you better news.
Max and I stood in the hole of the mother tree, and she groaned from inside like a tormented soul. It was painful to listen to.
In my head, I imagine contorted faces made of wood, a mouth open with screams unhearable to the human ear.
‘It’s time we tell them, above,’ I told Max.
Max nodded.
We signed off our lousy news with, ‘The only thing left of the earth is you.’
The truth is, fellow humans, you didn’t see yourself as the earth enough, so you used it like a commodity, not as a relationship between reciprocal beings.
The world was your oyster; the sky was the limit.
But you didn’t even stay to that supposed limit either, did you?
We all have and had an aversion to death which was only natural, but now I have seen there is no worse fate than the death of death.
Will the world ever recover? Maybe. But not in our lifetime. It’s too late for us.
And in my metal body, there are no tears I can cry.
My mind terraforms this alien soundscape
Tendrils reaching down, down, down
a spark of something unseen
an inverted skeleton
without a smile but a frown
propelling myself as a jellyfish
up, up and out
Electric sirens seeking me out
A torment of screeching ghouls
screaming from my mouth
The sounds drew ripples around us
containing us
wrinkled and transformed
waves of consciousness anchored
bearing witness to this gathering
of all matter created in our image
a conglomeration of everything and nothing
a hoard of haves and have nots
a buildup to ‘just fucking stop!’
Too much, too much one
too much none
a climatic climb
an anticlimactic drop
rust falling from antiquated props
traditions burning candles
with prayers answered, not
swindled of thought
trajectories yet untold
falling below this ocean
of accumulations sold.