Seismic Nought

They let me sit on turtles when I was tiny Squeeze up to the glass of hammerhead giants, Slurp on sea creatures and blow dandelions… We don’t exactly mirror the monkey But are closer than we think we might be and definitely as funny… Our obsession with movable things and lunatic flippancy… But our eyes, like the monkey, hold something bewildering - reaching . . . Eyes half like the whales of the ancient seas - possessing something purer, deeper to teach… Meanwhile the turtle jerks its head, creeping - slowly climbing their way through this world’s conflicted feeling… And the child that sat on their moving beach was carried a small cosmos - Like the wild horses under emerald-gold bods catching up with eternity’s calm clock…

Calling all killers of humanity… It’s time to leave quietly Yeah, you’ve been loud, but so have we… And our pain, our tears, our crowds are much grander than you’ll ever be… You see the more you curse us the more we feel … feel such rich absurdity - the real reactionary now assembling It’s time to leave quietly - ashamed and loveless… No room for beasts in our city of mapless - hand us the glove back Now you fall into the gaping hole of decay on the dead side, And we rise into the flourishing future fine - blossoming aqua - forever bright…

I’ve been avoiding you… can’t you tell? no more hollering at your high hell… no more fitting in your shell You place me to your ear - how queer and shake me like the queen of fear And it’s not exactly hell, but that’s just it The way you make the bruise seem bliss, hate to see you like this Well not exactly that it isn’t bliss but the way you simplify it Like we should whore and hide what’s really in this… Like there aren’t levels of hue to undo as the wound fades with the root behind it As if we can’t climb, define and shine it - the strange that makes us blind this, before love - our brightness… Couldn’t turn the mechanism livened by the sting of realness before removing the prick, as if this wasn’t our remit, to transcend this So you see, even though my eyes sparkle and voice cradles your burlesque-bull flit … I’ve been avoiding you and the way you rush me as if to say, “don’t run fool…” But one day you’ll find the lens in which you look appears smudged - and the crys...

Last of the leeches… Could this be the last of the leeches? Could we pass through this desperately dying stage into a new age… An age with love, an age with warmth, an age with even more captured realness? No more room for a boy to be taught that they’re the official wheel that turns this… More time for ovals: no time for taradiddle Unravel our morphed industrial - to emphasise what’s crucial, like the oil paint swirls in calm river water or the shock of a cure for another… We know it could be possible, if we made one giant swivel You and I may be no storm, but they say that butterflies create the new norm… So let’s flutter with form, carry the sweetness on Till there’s no more misery for them to feed upon

So we let the vampires drain us into submission… Until we have no power to fight anymore Let them conquer our mycorrhizal networks, where special hearts and minds once helped us see beyond the abandoned treasure chest… Until our melancholy becomes desperately soothing like cocaine to a cancer Until we no longer speak it; just assume it - this feeling… We’ll stay half awake, but no more than this in-betweenness - Live just about comfortable enough lives where we can breed love through our offspring, as if it’s only an offering, an inkling rather than a way of being… So we’ll sit with our knives: focused, hearts heavy and ticking As if the only way to protect our children from the lie of the dim light that once flickered from the door is to kill the moth that made it and will one day come back searching… That knife’s easier to use than letting that child leave that room of shadowed walls; to test this world devoid of fear, linking wings with a fast expanding fluttering…

So this is how it ends; By them deciding for us how we end our lives As if this old world’s neglect is somehow the determining counterpart… By all accounts - we start