If one is hunting demons,
Look no further than the filthy mosquito,
That most hated of creations,
They are vermin on buzzing wings,
Employing their odious bayonets,
Sucking the vitae from all,
Trading it for disease and malady,
A truly foul trade arrangement,
These winged hussars of ill health,
They never sleep,
While man overtly cracks the planet,
They are waging a secret war,
A war on all healthy life.
I once saw an old clown,
Weeping his facepaint away,
Knelt beside a lonely stream,
He sent his regrets on the current,
Letting them go as little paper boats,
Like a sad armada,
Soon to be burned,
Soon to be forgotten,
Every failure and chink in his ego,
Taken away on the embracing waters,
Blazing trails past eroded rock fern and pine,
He did realise as he finally stood up,
It was important that he relinquished them,
That he sent them away,
The stream was of his own making,
A product of his tears.
We are spawned as a blank slate,
With no rhyme or reason,
A doll not yet painted,
A straw fetish not yet burned,
We’re a biological puzzle,
A mutable disasterpiece,
We shift and grow over the years,
Mutated by our experiences,
Adapting bodily to lifes toils,
Given hardier scales after each betrayal,
Sharper talons and fangs for every struggle,
Sprouting wings to follow our dreams,
Each of us adapts differently,
The beauty and horror of nature,
Decade after decade,
And trial after challenge,
We keep evolving,
Until we finally go extinct.
Our lifeforce is a potion,
Brewed by some unseen witch,
Mother Nature in a pointy hat,
Following a recipe as old as time,
All manner of ingredients are sown,
Rosebuds and onyx and nightshade,
Moonlight and sunshine,
Thorns and salt and belladonna,
Carrion bird feathers and puppy dog tails,
Only the best components,
To create this marvel of alchemy,
A heartbeat in liquid form,
Imbibed within the womb,
And coughed up upon our deathbed.
The sun is fervent,
And the fields of green surround us,
Nature in all its splendour,
And its authority,
A patchwork of reeds and moss,
Tarmac snaking betwixt,
Hay fever winds and manure vistas,
A million little legs within the grass confines,
Fur and feather and carapace,
The fields of green are all around,
Pulsing,
Encroaching.
Death is a panther,
You cannot spy it amongst the bush,
But you know it hunts you,
Hunts us all,
A killing machine to the bone,
Scythe-like fangs,
And eyes trained on your every breath,
Following your scent since birth,
Its claws rasp across grass and asphalt both,
Its hunt could take years,
Decades even,
But this feline always gets its meat,
Death is a panther,
It’s a grizzly or falcon or barracuda,
It’s an apex predator,
Not formed of flesh and blood,
But of solemn inevitability.
My head is a menagerie of story ideas,
I lay and I feel it,
A flurry of beasts in flux,
Roiling flashes of fur and scale,
A flipbook without continuity,
Alligators built of angst nipping at the walls,
Wolves and bears enacting throes of action,
Swans of romance,
Nosferatu of horror,
And pudgy felines of political discourse,
These ideas scratch at my corneas,
Striving to fly free of this enclosure,
I have the keys at hand,
To release them one at a time,
Put in transit in swathes of ink.
From this lethargic window,
I often look up at the sky,
Tracing dreams in the clouds,
And I see those birds,
Vibrant flocks eloping to freedom,
They leave little pinions of colour,
Like love letters with no recipient,
A rain of sentiment in myriad pigment,
Each feather tells a story,
Of grief and bliss and love,
Recited as I run my finger across,
Silent but clear as day,
The birds fly on lighter,
I’m left behind in the grey,
With this plumage of fables cast off,
A mottle they needed to disperse to reach paradise.
Oh master,
Why have you left me out here?
You disappeared into that storefront portal,
And time has seemed to stop existing,
Days and years shoot by as I sit,
I thought I was your best friend,
I’m a good boy master,
Your furry partner in crime,
You left me some meagre payoff,
This little water bowl of pity,
Not even a doggy treat,
I bark and I call,
My howls growing shrill,
And yet you don’t come back,
It’s cold out here,
And this chain keeps me from finding you.
To read is to commune with nature,
A very personal ritual,
Authors breath life on to these fragments of lumber,
Rejuvenation via ink and quill,
Your eyes scan across the veins of oak,
Hallucinating as you go line by line,
Seeing stars and lands never formed,
A veritable opera of sundry speakers,
Worlds of every ilk imaginable,
Fashioned by a writers madness,
Literary paths left for you on parchment,
The skin of the forest,
Books are the trees talking to us,
Mother Natures voice,
Translated by shamans of the written word.
WorldofHarley 