I saw one with the placidness of death
A necropolis pummelled, with mallets of sorrow,
By the brutishness of Silence and numbed by the
Prickly shafts of premature grey hair, sickly and odorous.
Even Tokyo, normally awash with people and pets,
Pots and pans, observed the rules of siesta.
I witnessed it —a virus so vicious —!
A plague that humbled one and all —
Troglodytes we!
Troglodytes troglodytes
A tiny European bird
Secretive and sensitive
But very often heard.
Its Latin name is very long
In contrast to its size.
Its British name
Is very short
We simply call it
‘Wren’.
However grand its Latin name
It’s glorious in one thing.
Oh, you should hear
So loud and clear
How it melodiously sings!
From out of such a tiny bird
Pours out a mighty sound
Far sweeter and far louder
Than so many birds around.
A tiny bird
Tells us that
Its great Creator
Can do more
Than we can ever ask or think.
“Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Ephesians 3:20
You’re a hollow tree, listening
to the tapping claws of am exposed sky.
You sit sideways staring over your shoulder.
A rib cage full of naked troglodytes
looks up into your throat.
Wintery seas leak over ice-bound rooftops.
Bedsheets come to rest as snowdrifts.
You find yourself observing the world
through the top of your head.
You find yourself reading
the pale blue veins on a frozen window.
Roads might be passable. Wind-whales plow through,
pushing insomnia ahead of them.
The cold is a color yet to be decoded,
but you breathe through it, red tongue
slipping through clouds of needles.
You count crow-calls, shiver when they stop.
The passage between you and the chill floor
is umbilical, you may have to bear down.
You skirt the edges of yourself,
until your mind thaws beneath parked cars.
Troglodytes worked
A twenty hour week
But I'm sat in the meeting
Blinded by the pasty PowerPoint
On the horizon
I misread the slide title as
'Come Touch Me Baby'
Then I remember that I'd read
The invention of farming
Was one big shambles
Cave-dwellers had it good
Then it all went to
The earliest texts weren't poetry
But long lists of outstanding debts
Ben Franklin spat how when
The civilised man and woman
Were captured and then released
By Savage Life they would
"Take the first good opportunity
Of escaping again into the woods."
The meeting is over and we escape
As the staff all wait by the school gate
Because we're three minutes
Early clocking out
We stare at our smartphones
It hits ten past five
Out of the starting blocks
We call it a day
On arriving home we need
To call the bank and think
About hunter-gatherers
Hanging out and hooking up
Blinking as we emerge
Into the golden, blinding light
Oh we need the open air
For we are no troglodytes,
Cobalt skies, verdant greens
Room to breathe, a soul set free,
As the scourge diminishes
So grows a sense of joy and glee.
Entry for
BRIAN'S CHOICE J ,any form, any theme Poetry Contest
Sponsored by Brian Strand.
17/5/2020. Placed 3rd.
You’re a hollow tree, listening
to the tapping claws of am exposed sky.
You sit sideways staring over your shoulder.
A rib cage full of naked troglodytes
looks up into your throat.
Wintery seas leak over ice-bound rooftops.
Bedsheets stiffen into ersatz snowdrifts.
You find yourself observing the world
through the top of your head.
You find yourself observing recoiling raw endings,
the pale blue veins upon buffeted window.
Roads might be passable. Wind-whales plow through,
pushing insomnia ahead of them.
The cold is a color yet to be decoded,
but you breathe through it, see its fractured tinge.
You count crow-calls, shiver when they stop.
The passage between you and the chill floor
is umbilical, you may have to bear down.
You skirt around yourself,
letting your mind thaw under parked cars.
1.
Murders in congress
grimly ponder on parapet walls
on the grim reality of lost homes
and loved ones yet unborn -
their casual caws more muted
than the usual cacophony
of careless camaraderie.
2.
The still dark night
of scintilla-ed canopy
and eerie filigreed fingers
of flora bereft of foliage once lush
limned against the pallor of
moonlight mocking at men
reduced and humbled now
from their hubris then.
3.
Candlelight dinners
bereft of the trappings and finesse,
a gourmet's grumps bring together
rediscovered ties
of familial bonds under the thickened web
of electronic sludge and slime
now briefly removed.
4.
The sweet lullaby of a
distant mercenary generator
puts me to sleep
in the comfort of knowing
that i am not alone.
Troglodytes in surreal settings.
I woke up this morning
Tired as a wolf-hound
After the chase.
The day is as stark
As an unfinished concerto.
Mondays are like that,
They are the beginning--
An unwrapped gift.
The weekend is an abandoned beach
And dirty snow pushed aside.
A new and well-oiled axle is turning.
My wheels are turning.
It is a time for molding,
For casting lots across a Persian rug.
We gather up the days as we go along
And nurture them like fools.
Every week the tide washes away the old debris
And pushes new refuse upon the sand.
Picking litter is the lot of those
Inclined to service,
Always scrubbing tidy rooms.
Troglodytes wait to be remembered
Under the pick of a rock hound.
The seeker finds fossils from the past,
And the hours pass unnoticed.
f*ck justin bieber
f*ck harold and kumar
f*ck huey lewis
f*ck star trek
f*ck everything that isn't classical music
f*ck art that doesn't make sense who the f*ck would pay
5 billion dollars for splotches
of
paint
f*ck mariah carey
f*ck reading books
get a kindle god dammit
it's 2012
and people still read books
and listen to the beatles
what the f*ck is wrong with you troglodytes
Even the dead reject this blasted earth.
The ground, such as it is,
Is freshly Antidiluvean,
The corpses swim within its tumbled, heaving masses
Blood and mud the mortar
Holding the chaos together.
The sun is weak,
Ashamed to break the haze
To bring to light the obscenities transpiring here.
The whistles blow
The troglodytes emerge
From their respective holes,
Staggering towards one another
Through watery craters
Over the mincemeat of comrades
To add themselves to the swimming sacrifice
Constantly on offer
To the insatiable, sole diety of this place,
The Mud-God, Futility.
They are men no more,
Those who struggle 'neath
The leaden skies
The wan sun
Of the sodden moonscape
That is Passchendale.
They are only raging beasts
Trading pain for pain,
All trace of cause or reason
Lost in the maelstrom of their collective misery -
The only escape
Is to slay and to be slain;
To join the bitter shades
Ascending with the fog and smoke
Through the wall of cloud above,
To vanish into the icy deeps
Among the far, impassive stars.
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