End of Days, part III

On a dark and dreary street

In the deepest darkest heart

Of the capital of a country

Still reeling from the shock

Of the discovery of its own frailty

On a Christmas night, hid

From the reaches of holiness

Peals of laughter sound

Beneath a railway bridge

Men and women gather

In a tavern, gaily lit

And warmly welcoming

To travellers on this night

Damp and dishevelled

Clapping their arms

Against their sides, they rejoice

Glass of wine in hand,

They greet each other

With kisses and slaps

On the shoulder, as if

In congratulation

For some deed or other

They form circles, smoking,

Drinking and ever laughing

In their hearts, they believe,

They are invincible

Protected by their own mirth

They feel no pain

Shielded by a smeary, bleary

Window, at which I can

Only press my nose

Outside, I am a spirit

Ephemeral as the winter wind

A ghost of a ghost, unseen

And unremarked by revellers

With good cheer in their thoughts

And no room in their hearts

I will lie outside their shield of glass

Forgotten for another year

End of Days, Part II

As you sit breathing in
The foetid urine stink
Of the city evening
You find yourself guilty
For thinking your plight
To be worse than others'
And a million million
Big wet eyes well up
At you in the dark
And give you hell
With the tale of their hell
All broken limbs
And stories of desolation
With no self pity
In their silent song
They weep inside you
You coward
You soft, weak puppy
You coddled child
You remonstrate with yourself
But you know
You'll do the same
Nothing you always do
And time is slipping
More quickly than you'd like
Into the swirling sucking drain
Beneath your feet
And your safe city night
Races on around you
Your snarling serpent train
Winding on and on and on
And you feel the hands
Of a million million million
Doomed denizens of
The same planet as you
Albeit a different world
Begging you to
Pull them free
But you kick them away
Still chained to your own
Pedestrian woes
And in the blink
Of the blink of the
Yellow sulphurous light
You let them go

End of Days, Part I

I have seen the end of our race
Crying men, chasing bloody oil
Their grandiosity not enough
To heal the open wounds
That they have wrought
On ground made unholy
By screaming desperate struggles
To come out on top
And angels themselves have
Ceased to guard these men who
Have no idea of how to gaze
With love on the creation
That they swore was above
All else and worth the fight

They have lost their own salvation
And now they are coming
To snatch it away from the
Shrunken hands of starving
Mothers whose children
Have been sacrificed to the
God of progress

They believe unfailingly
That they will be clean
And the stains that
Soak through their skin
To their very being have
Been hard won
They believe that
They will wash away when
They come to ask for
Their reward and they will be
Children again

But they were never children,
Only prototypes of their savage
Future selves, waiting to
Let loose the greatest devastation
Of an age and drown their
Own wicked emptiness, for they
Were made ready in the womb
To cut the throats of infants and
Never cast a backward eye
On the ruined women they
Left behind, calling them
Collateral damage

I have seen the battle scars
Left by men who would shred
The flesh of weaker mortals
To satisfy their blood lust
From behind the solid walls
Where they give their orders
To the hardened, haunted youth
Brought in from hungry streets
And promised hope
Decried for their vicious ways
By hypocrites whose eyes
See nothing but the feted
Bottom line

Adam Lost, part III

There were other animals besides Monkey and the birds and the little animals he was able to catch and kill. They walked silently among the trees and some of them had big, sharp teeth. Sometimes, they came out of the trees and they would chase him because they wanted to eat him. He remembered some of their faces from pictures he'd seen and he knew they would kill him if they caught him. Once, they came very close. He heard a crash in the trees and all of sudden, one of them was coming right towards him, with big yellow eyes and wide, snapping jaws, full of awful teeth. It was growling, coming closer and closer, ready to take him for its prey. He knew he had to run, but he was afraid and his legs seemed soft and they wouldn't do what he told them. He picked up the sharpstone and threw it as hard as he could at the animal, hitting it above one big yellow eye. Then at last he was running and he ran and ran until he was far away and he couldn't see the animal anymore.

When he stopped, he didn't know the trees or the rocks around him. He was far, far away and he didn't know how to get back. His home, his real home, was long gone, but he had come to love his new one. He had spent a long time making it better, with animal skins to keep him warm and soft dry dirt to sleep on in the little cave where he sheltered from the rain. He had never strayed far because he was afraid of the other animals and he didn't want to be lost again. He dropped down on the hard, cold ground and began to cry. He hadn't cried for a long time, but he was so tired and lost that he couldn't stop himself. He didn't know if Monkey would ever find him or if he would ever find his way back. With a sad, heavy heart, he got up and he began to walk. He wished he knew some bad words so that he could curse the other animal that had caused his sadness, but he couldn't remember any.

For many days, he walked, following the changing trees and the sounds of the animals. Sometimes, he thought he heard the other animal again, but he never saw it. He tried hard to keep from giving in to the terrible aching in his heart, but it would rise and make him want to lie down, and let the other animal come and eat him whole. He had to live on the berries he could find among the roots of the trees because he didn't have the sharpstone anymore and it was like a terrible game. He couldn't remember which ones would make him sick and he grew frightened every time he needed to eat. Days and days and days, he walked, until he thought he would die from his despair. When he stopped to rest, he thought maybe he would be lost forever. It was a long time, but finally, finally, he began to recognise the trees. When he began to see some of the trails he had left and the places where Monkey used to sit and watch him, he thought his heart would burst. He began to cry again, but they were happy tears and he felt glad for the first time in as long as he could remember. Then he could see his little cave and his animal skins and he was home. 

Love

Today, I love you more
My dear
Than ever, I think
Before
I love the dark, curling forest
Of hairs
At the nape of your neck
I love
Your fingernails and eyelashes
I love
The scent of you that
Remains
On my clothes and on
My skin
I love the sweet expanse of
Deep gold
That wraps itself around
Your hands
And arms and feet and fingers
I love
Your lovely mind, my love
And all
The beautiful ways that you
Love me

China doll

China doll
You're beautiful
Baby doll
So sweet
The problem is
My pretty one
There's nothing
Underneath

Adam Lost, part II

He dreamed of them often – of his mother and father, and the little girl – and that was the only time he could remember the before time. He imagined the little girl must be bigger now because he had grown bigger but in his dreams, she was always small.

She had lots of dark brown hair and dark brown eyes that looked like his, and his mother and father stood tall above them where he couldn’t see their faces. In his dreams, they all lived together in a place that was warm and there was always food and the food tasted good.

Sometimes, in the very deepest dark of the night, his mother and father’s faces would come back to him, hanging like smiling ghosts in the empty air, but he could never catch hold of them.

He longed for sleep to take him back to them, but he hated it, too, because they always faded.

In the morning, when the sun crept up over the tops of the trees and they were gone, he felt cold and sad and alone all over again. He wondered where they were and what they were doing and whether they thought of him, but he couldn’t bring their faces back.

After these dreams, he would talk to Monkey when he could get Monkey to sit still for long enough, but Monkey was no help. He was only squat and hairy and he would swing his long tail and then he would be gone again.

It was only when he slept that he could see them and they would bring him peace. Most of the dreams made him feel safe and loved, but there were other dreams, too. In the other dreams, it was dark and loud and there were people everywhere, running and screaming, their eyes big and wild and afraid. He was running too, trying catch up with them, but his legs wouldn’t move fast enough.

He was grasping for his mother’s fingers but his hands were too slippery and he couldn’t hold on. He could see her face, twisted with fear, and he wanted to cling to her, but someone else was pulling her away, telling her it was too late. The little girl was ahead of her, clinging to their father.

In these dreams, his mind was always clear. In the middle of all the screaming, he could see all of their faces, all weeping as they watched him stumble and fall. In these dreams, he could always feel the sharp, raw pain shooting through his palms when he hit the hard ground and put his hands out to break his fall. In these dreams, he was small and weak and abandoned.

In these dreams, he was alone.

Adam Lost, part I

When his hair got too long and tufty, he would cut it with the sharpstone and send the clumps of fuzz flying out into the trees for the birds to use in their nests.  He liked to imagine them bedding down in it, making use of something he didn’t need. He rarely saw the birds because it was dark in the trees, but he heard them, singing and twittering above him, and that made him feel happy.

When the sharpstone grew too blunt, he would strike it against another stone until it was sharp and dangerous again. It was a life of small things and small means of keeping himself from falling asleep forever.

When he was lonely, he talked to Monkey. Monkey was small and squat and hairy and had a long tail and sometimes he didn’t come back for days. But when Monkey came back, he would be happy and feel safe again. He could look at the brightwater and see the doubleface staring back at him and not start back in fear.

He had to look at the brightwater to cut his facehair because otherwise, he would cut his skin with the sharpstone and there would be blood.

Blood frightened him, but sometimes, he wondered whether he might not use the sharpstone to cut his throat and go to sleep forever. He was so hungry so much of the time and the little animals he caught and killed with the sharpstone were tough and tasteless to eat. It was a life of small things and sometimes, sleeping forever seemed better.

At night, he dreamed of the before time when he had a mother and a father and a girl they called his sister. She was pretty and small and she followed him wherever he went but he couldn’t remember her name. It was such a long time ago, the before time. He tried hard to remember the time before the before time, but it was hard and the pictures were all blurred and strange.

There was something that happened in the time before the before time. There was something that made his mother and his father and the girl they called his sister disappear. It was something awful and big and it made all the walls and the houses and the streets fall away.

In his place among the trees, where he lived with Monkey when Monkey came back, he could see some of the old things, beneath the leaves and the vines. They had names, the tall grey stones and the smooth clear notstones, but he couldn’t remember. There was no one to talk to except Monkey and Monkey didn’t say anything.

Many years must have passed since the before time, or so he imagined, because his skin had grown brown and hard and it wasn’t the same when he lay down because he felt the sharp sticks and stones beneath his body. His facehair and the other hair were still brown though and he remembered the old people turned grey like the stones.

There was no way to mark the passing of time, but he knew when the sun was high because it was hot and he had to keep to the shade of the trees. It was hot most of the time but sometimes, the rain would come and he would feel peaceful. It was cool and sweet and he could hear it softly falling on the leaves and it made things fresh again.