December 2nd
It was our houses that were the aliens
we became the invasions
and I am no less guilty
needing these things as much
as any man if not more
lest the cold get to my troubled heart
the birds sing of things we couldn’t
we’re animals lost in communication
in which we still have no translation
1st December
In the woods
grounded in rugged boots
stripped from our alienation
we stand
in communion with the others
their tails waving and teeth chattering
and beaks opening trailing out winters breath
Bills drilling, tongues rolling
snapping up a woodpeckers delight
nothing is quite the same
once you realise
even dead trees are teeming with life
Shh…
Wipe over the dissonance in turquoise
to rid us of this tension
Shh…
Release us from this and into Eden
stay easy with your breath now
No one is the one
but one part of the whole
Shh…
Silence speaks volumes
our alienation seeking absence
The roots of us holding onto this earth
seeking solace in natures theme of rebirth
My breath trailed out before me as light as a feather
and a breeze blew through the enchanted forest
and spread the richness of autumns gold
like a clue enlightening desire paths
scented with that nutty earth aroma of a seasons transition
in which storms are brewed
just a stone’s throw away
from empty streets
and bounties becoming few
A teacup awaiting winters brew
I don’t need an umbrella
walking through this pseudo forest
as the leaves lose their leathery coating
blushing red as they blunder
as if embarrassed
by their fall
the elves of autumn
cleaning the trees
while the doves coo and woo
and the Jays covet a squirrels cache of acorns
and I, just a small part of the picture
walk and tumble through
pondering on the permanence
of our damage done like a tattoo
on the landscape while trying to find a place
non human to dispose of my civility
a wry smile hidden by a mane of hair
as I recognise I’m so much more at peace
without that polite formal mimicry.
I cry my land it’s tears
touching the winter
in frost
the wheels of time having churned
our vigil to summer
burning in candlelight
Learning what living looks like
in winter time
when skeletal remains of leaves
dissolve into carpets of dirt
I didn’t manage to use all the words in the list.
She existed only in the periphery of their vision. No one saw that in her was reflected truth. But maybe they had sensed it and that was why they never turned. She was a mirror, a fractured caricature of the society they tried to withhold.
They treated her presence like the absence of something long forgotten.
She was the earth and the bubble, the ecosystem that sustained them. Yet they dare not look.
The roads they paved both physically and metaphorically were scars upon her arms and wrists. And she bleeds away her sustainability while they continue to carve and crave more and more.
And while the Jays perch upon her oak crown and paint the forests, they cut them down. And sometimes she could forgive them, they were after all animals themselves. And some trees got put to good use but then they started to cut too much
And the land bared it’s bone.
The night was different shades of black with gold specs, and the moon was a silver goddess shining brightly onto the world when she left.
A fleeting love that died like the wilted roses of winter as snow blinkered all our colours in white.
The train came at 21:05, and that was that gone in a haze she was just a face staring back from a window with a tear writing sadness upon her cheek.
The snow of winter turned grey as it was muddied by the boots of people trudging their days away mindlessly while I noticed every little wish unfulfilled in the stars.
A plane shot through my vision, pointing as if it was going to the moon, a trail behind it that is poison in its own polluting way.
It occurred to me then that life itself was pollution, everything was spinning on this globe, and everything was interacting within it.
Yet we pulled ourselves outside of it with our distractions and words, but I know now it was only ever an illusion.
That we are the earth, as are the birds and the other beasts that share this world.
And the train shook on the tracks, our goodbyes said only in our staring eyes as the train rushed past, and I knew I’d never see her again.
yet she was still the earth as was I, even after the train tracks drew a divide between us
I didn’t yet know if that was comforting or all the more painful.
These goodbyes always feel like the end of the world, still, it turns, but somehow it doesn’t always help to remember that fact.
Our emotions never could stick to the notion of calendars and diary planners sometimes, an anniversary feels too quick in the heart and loss too long in the dark.
Neither of us waved, our eyes blinking through the sadness that words couldn’t express.
My eyes took a picture of her face in the window while it never left; it fades as the days go by, her absence getting more noticeable with every feature lost in the memory.
It seems to me absence is a lot like a cockroach
nothing can kill these beasts
Shut up buttercup and lay in the grass
We’ll watch the Jays fly past
his blue feathers not so covert
the king of the oaks
Watch him fly
and gleam all that he knows
His dinosaurian voice
And moustachioed wisdom
calling to us
the harshness of reality
as we lay back on fields of yellow
soft beneath our skin
yielding to our unrelenting bodies
in this monstrous
yet wondrous world
Beneath the cover of a tree
finding sanctuary
Watching the world pass by me
A blanket of rain pouring down
A reminder of the cycle of clouds
silverbackgorillapoetry.com 