Deserted soil

I. The Desert

 

See then, the hard

misshapen land, worn

away to sand, It is

dead and rots, it

shrinks and shrivels.

pick, pick, pick away, a vulture

feeds its children, you

their ready grub, no keep,

keep, keeping them at bay

(despite the stutter, some might say)

your fresh flesh slips down their open gullets.

They swallow. Their eyes

dark, hollow like your bones

flailing in the wind,

like algae in the angered, crashing ocean,

no moisture in the starved silence.

 

You have never been your own. Arid skin

around your fingernail rots. You said,

a woman

stands with deeply wrinkled skin,

speak,

speak now,

creature.

 

Silent shouting, silence cracking.

‘Watch them eat, watch then

as vultures feed their own and

overhead cast their darkness on your pallid, wilting skin.’

 

The silence haunts you still.

The still, dry desert, the water-less swill.

Eyes like five pence shopping bags

filled with too much greed.

The night comes and goes, she says 'sleep does not'.

 

One dark day,

dark, dry, soundless…DONE

‘I’m done, I’m done’

finally heard, only by you.

Pounding the dust. Making the dust.

The birds plummet closer and they plummet closer and

they plummet, closer still, silhouetted against the sun.

Sobbing, deep, dry tears, throat grating.

 

A forsaken child, a muted scream.

Take him upon your knee; lay him over your knee.

 

Picking at a scab

to feel the fresh cool blood, but out seeps nothing,

shrinking to a floating, hollow, skeleton,

soundless in the sea of air,

the vultures feed.

 

 

 

 

II. Smoke

 

It is not long, not long now;

it somehow drags, deep, drag on a cigarette,

vapour intoxicates your unblemished lungs and fills them.

Within it swells,

your head is light and there is fire in your stained, sickly fingers,

it sticks and dwells. Face turning fallow,

ailing daffodils late in spring.

Your fingers, your wallpaper, your lungs.

You knew that you had seen them close as you rested your un-weary head.

 

Your hairs singe, soon the film will start,

the surface falls apart,

ochre sun surges, yet the night air is held inside the smoke,

smoke from your conflagrated skin.

Jaundiced morning bleeds through the smoke.

 

 

 

III. The Bird

 

A gun is fired, the bullet hits a bird,

smacks and sinks deep into the pelt. The others

fly away, silently flapping wings.

The flies are descending.

The flies are descending.

Descending, towards headless confusion.

 

 

 

IV. Sink

 

She was taller than me, she is shorter now,

but still she is poised upon the brink;

tremendous above the sea,

she can reach me as I sink.

 

For I am still beating

my arms against the bland,

unbreakable water,

awkward, heavy bones

and pockets full of sand.

 

I was too weak always

(still she is poised upon the brink)

I was never close enough,

can she reach me as I sink?

 

V. Now I Am Through

 

Before the sunlight, before the sunlight,

yellow through the up-kicked sand;

before the pain of scorching skin,

silence is cracking.

 

I never despised you for all you have done,

I prefer you now that the past has happened,

where once the past was still to occur?

The past where we are living;

leave it in the desert to asphyxiate in the smoke.

No water here in the deathly dry sand.

 

She will not save that,

she would kill it, if she could;

heavy we do sink.

You say, you say, you say;

I always knew it was you.

You dragged me down, now I am through.