Woodland Duke

I waltzed upon a woodland path,
To release some serotonin,
To be one with the natural backdrop,
Between the crowds of bark giants,
I chanced upon a wonderful sight,

I had been granted an audience,
A once in a lifetime opportunity,
To meet the duke of this wood,
A regal beast of wild aristocracy,
A titanic stag of primeval physique,

Towering over even the treetops,
His antlers scratched sermons into the clouds,
Treatises on woodland matters,
He stood upon ivory legs commanding respect,
Purely demanding reverence from all,

He stared into my urban soul,
As if in pity,
I could only bow,
A newfound awe crosses my mind,
A lord of nature has blessed me,

With a new heart of dew,
Pulsing with vitality/

Salted Earth

As fools we spite the land,
Cutting into her flesh with drill and scalpel,
Rubbing salt in the wounds,
A different kind of salted earth,
Her very flesh stolen as ore,
Her own blood wielded as torture,
A stinging iron maiden,
We rub it in,

Taking gifts with clawed hands,
Plundering and pillaging,
Diamonds and salt and gold,
We laugh all the way to the bank,
But we’ll be the fools,
Our own doomsayers,
As salted earth,
Becomes scorched earth.

War Wounds

The Earth strives to heal,
From the corruption of warfare,
Still wounded decades later,
Still polluted by the arsenic of empires,

From the minds of old men,
Did these scars across the land come,
Painted by bone shards and blood of the young,
Spread by the quills of artillery and lead,

Many souls died here,
Laid to rest in craters,
Mother Nature lies beside them in solidarity,
Mourning for the industrial slaughter,

And the planet still weeps,
Those tears of acid rain,
She hates those old men,
And endeavours to right their wrongs.

Doomsday Device

The human world is a machine,
Forcibly implanted into the flesh of the Earth,
Its blades feeding deep into ore and fauna both,
All gears and buzz saws,
Propellants and crude oil,
Skyscrapers and drills,
Crewed by billions of little viruses,
Arms-dealers and fuel barons all,
Giving this machine its relentless drive,

This human device is self-propagating,
Procreation is refuelling the machine,
Birth to coffin and back again,
Meat and fat and ribs,
Keeping that grinder chock-full,
Little darlings as high calibre rounds,
Piercing the planets chest cavity,
Heat death on the way,
An apocalypse by inches.

Human Dregs

We are the dregs,
All of us,
Released by the dam of the morn,
Waters of ill repute,
Stagnant and vacuous,
Filled with larvae of future parasites,
We are the dregs,
What remains when worth is gone,
Sloshing along urban waterways,
Swirling past each other,
Watching the floors,
We are not wellsprings,
Providing no essences of life,
Only drowning,
Killing and consuming,
We are the dregs,
Remnants of an elixir of hope,
We are the tsunami,
We are scorched earth,
The azure death of all before us.

Arbour Gate

She had always dreamed of glades,
Beds of grass and hydrangea companions,
Dreamed of owl storytellers,
And choirs of rodent and hare,
So she called to the druids,
Those shepherds of the trees,
Go between those boughs they told her,
That shaded gateway to the forest,

That path of dirt snaking betwixt oaks and ash trees,
Those arbours embraced her,
Taking her amongst them like ivy,
They whispered in breezy leaves,
Bestowing upon her a cape of nature,
And a crown of flowers,
They loved her,
And she them,

Jointly they would watch the world pass,
The passage of the planets entropy,
And decay together at the end.

Landscapes

The Earth is a water painting,
Created by some invisible Picasso,
Still damp from the godly brushstrokes,
The skies morph before your eyes,
Ever changing,
As if moved by the brushes’ impetus,

Blended swathes of viridian making up the fields,
A view into the many masks of the land,
The arid lands and barrens shine in saffron ardour,
Each river a stroke of woad,
You can see the current in its very pigment,
A sublime portraiture,

It’s a look at our mother in artistic disclosure,
Showing her countless faces,
Both serene and destructive,
The paintings surface feels both molten and siberian,
Professing the worlds extremes in colour,
After all isn’t a landscape just a portrait of the world?

Infestation

The world is a corpse,
Lain amidst rot and pus,
Split up and killed long ago,
Now nothing more than ore,
Nothing more than flesh,

We are vermin gnawing at the meat,
An infection borne of Mother Natures own seed,
Rats in tracksuits and skirts,
Stinking,
Malignant,

Deaths spectre strafes up above,
The barbers blade,
Picking us off one by one,
Dining upon our foul frail forms,
Eternal bird gets the worm,

But the reaper can only excise so many,
We’ve become quite the obstinate infestation,
We are legion,
So the only salve I fear,
Would be the sun stepping in,

And we all know what that means.

Hitchhiker

There was a girl who longed for freedom,
Illuminated in urban neon,
Stood beside a cold drab road,
She put a thumb out,
A signal to the world,
That she wishes to escape this life,
For a car trip to anywhere,

A yearning into the universe,
To be an unidentified flying object,
To shift her lifes paradigm,
To surge under peachy cider skies,
Astral winds blowing in her hair,
Leather car interior expeditionary,
Devil of ennui in the rear view,

She’ll scale the borders,
Making use of every carriage timely,
From truck to hatchback to coupe,
Revelling in her independence,
Once the globe has felt her sight,
Will she return home I wonder?
Or partake another hitchhike onwards?

Intravenous USB

Mankind has an addiction,
Technological advancement,
Fire to bronze to wheel,
Iron to steel to silicon,
A necessity turned to reliance,
Then morphed again to obsession,
Progress colliding with social media craving,
Lines of code cut by crafters hand,

We squat in plasterboard boxes,
Civilised little addicts,
Smoking carbon monoxide from factories,
Painting our eyes a glossy television white,
In turn plugging our lives into a synthetic spiders web,
USBs straight into our veins,
An electrical current,
Narcotics of information and memes,

Veins of black gold,
Wi-Fi heartbeat,
The world has become a machine,
With man feeding off of it,
Plugged into its plastic globe,
With carrier bag oceans and global warming skies,
A seeming paradise to most,
Not our problem others say,

But the thing about USB cables,
Sometimes they break.