As though it was born free only to eat,
The soft caterpillar keeps on its work--
Just to turn and finish the leaves neat;
And on it goes unchanging,all in the lurk
Till begins the self centred walling in plot;
A soft, round globule comes up wrought
Only to be boiled and disrupted to fraught
The potter wasp has flights great many,
To the clay and water pits far and near
As is chosen the safe nook or slot puny
With all vigour, labour and concern dear,
The little bit sticks to the select spot fast,
That the set purpose resolves till the last,
And greed does not breed a monster ghast
I see your eyes glaze
Like a haze
Upon your vision
As I near
I can clearly hear
Derision
Malice would have me
Open wide and engage
Try to diffuse your rage
Against all that is pure
The resilience to endure
Every flip of the page
~In The Book~
In presence, I rise
Past all that would slay
Declare Vindication Day
I stand as the tide roars
All the weight of fear, trying to bore
Holes in the offerings I pray
....but this time
............this time.......I stay....grounded
Every adversary I meet
The black mirror greets
With grace to see
All the smudges of mud
Cows chewing the cud
And the sting of the bee
Rejected without value
Disgusting, gaunt, shallow
No depth to root
The part of growing
No beauty wants showing
Is the fertilizer that made the fruit
...golden...
Written by Trudy Schrader on 07-12-2025
Lying on silk sheets
Warm covers up to my neck
Yet sleep will not land
Walking the white sand
Gentle breeze wafting fragrant flowers
But angst grips my heart
Sacred connection in motion
Children are happy and content
However, a dull knife pierces memory
....empty, no back, no front....just HERE
in this God forsaken space
...........weeping.....for comfort, wisdom, and grace
Shhh...silence is working
Be still, soul of sorrow
Wait without wailing....walling in the wake
Change is happening
Written by Trudy Schrader on 01-04-2025
Surely
I am not
The only one
I remember
Thousands
I walked with
For a non nuclear stance
Now
Silence
Even before
Those brave humans
That took on apartheid
An battled
The Queensland government
Silence
And where's
The freedom voice bus?
Students r u
Drones
Or
Thinkers and tinkerer's
Slowly
By surely
Walling our self's in
To a fake
Normal
A false
Reality
For a few
Control nefariously
That new brick
Surveillance neo capital fascism
And the masses
Rejoice
Behold
Our new brick
And don't the people wonder
After the river floods
And Chunder's
Or
The fire
All scotched
All burnt
Their left
Standing alone
Pondering
What's a government for?
Cause
Harvey an Woodside
Ain't gonna come
An help me
But, no
They accept it
To not
Is not
To be normal
So
F@#k you all
I am
Not normal
And I don't accept it
If I write
Just one word
That provokes
An act of kindness
Or
Spark of curiosity
Just a small
Twinge of the lips
Heading for a smile
I will have succeeded
And I have
Just as others
Of my kind
Have
Six feet apart, our hands cannot meet.
Behind prison walls, it seems, we greet.
Faces are veiled in surgeon masks, afraid,
within one's own stale breath stayed.
Walling off every suspect unknown,
we're isolated, and yet not alone.
In breaking news... another onset.
Another's breath, an open threat.
Await the countdown to lockdown...
Inhale the last fresh breaths of your town.
With outlook of terror, perception ill-fated,
although not alone, we become isolated.
3-16-2020
As the sting of betrayal pierced your heart;
your tears were exposed, for all to see.
And as reason raced through a gauntlet
of choices, you realized
each one devastated your heart.
You woke from a dream, composed of reality
defused with imagination:
whereas love was tentative, at best.
And yet, so precious
as to awe you with its beauty,
and yet scare you with its fragility.
Walling off your heart, you cried
over the pain Hope had inflicted.
Love once felt passionate, and on fire;
yet that degree of heat left you vulnerable,
like a moth to a flame.
A moth cannot help being a moth;
with all its urges and desires;
while the flame cannot be anything but a flame.
And so, the meeting of the two,
although spectacular, is doomed to be short-lived.
Like a moth to Fire's flame, you were seduced
by the heat of deceitful words;
and you fell prey to their sway.
Only to realize love was but an illusion,
when, like a puff of smoke, it disappeared today.
AnthroCentrism
grows from globally rabid nihilism.
As cynicism
grows from anthropocentric roots
As narcissism
grows from cynical Lose/Lose
trampling our Win/Win EarthTribe opportunities
in over-marching,
uneconomically smart
unecologically naive
anti-ego/ecosystemic,
stomping bully boots.
What the USSR Military-Terrorist Party
learned the hard way,
their Russian mafia metamorphosis
has learned a simpler
continuing kleptocratic way:
When plundering and raping your own people
and Earth's international climate of active nutritional hope,
it is easier
and less transparent
to not have the unfortunate responsibilities
of actual
factual RealTalk
and RealWalk governing service provision
Like developing robust health and climate care systems
and building safe railroads and bike paths
and viable water and sewer systems
and healthy soil
and potable water supplies
and breathable air
and not quite so yang-fired up
win/lose competitive capital hoarding
among just-us AnthroCentric plutocrats.
Would that Apprentice Donald
had stayed private mafia likewise
rather than fiddling and twittering
extracting and walling
making America grungy again.
Tonight theres a fortress around my heart,
walling off the hurt that's on the outside,
my heart is once again avoiding the darts,
and wants to gallop off for a solitary ride,
knowing desperately my heart wants to forgive you,
as I slowly swallow my hurtful pride,
hesitantly letting my drawbridge back down,
letting you once again come gallop back inside,
knowing deep down inside you are a danger,
hearing only my own sobbing echoes in my hearts chambers.
11-13-16
When rejection eludes understanding
Anxiety places love on trial.
And you start pleading for just one more chance,
extrapolating Hope from denial.
A heart haunted by unrequited love;
begins drifting between Hope and disgust.
And pursuing fleeting shadows of joy,
it loses its ability to trust.
You must hold truth as a prerequisite
if love is to have any chance at all.
For, shackled to an inflated ego,
lies will only intensify your fall.
Reality seemingly disappears,
isolated within fanciful dreams.
And depression becomes your nemesis;
fueling frustration and silent screams.
Unfulfilled dreams morph into delusion:
resulting in an inward migration.
And walling off your heart, you're imprisoned;
in a fantasy of your creation.
As acid tears begin to dissolve Hope,
happiness starts slipping away once more.
And you want to turn back the hands of time:
so that everything could be as before.
Walling off the bad
You've self-imprisoned your heart
From reaching the good;
Hope you understand life now,
It's imperfect just like us
NORTHERN ENGLAND
Steep hills and sudden
Gouged by ice, and water-formed -
This is no civilized landscape gentle
With demesne and orchard
And sun-kissed downland copses;
It is the terrain of warfare,
Of Northumbrian tearing at Scot,
Of Hadrian walling off the terrifying Pict,
Where the sea is held by Marsden’s cliffed face
And Cullercoats huddles in fear of a storm.
.................................................................
Other poems of mine, similar to this, are available at
https://www.fictionmagazines.com/magazines/five/
On A Relaxed Recline On A Spring’s Soft-Sunny Day
=====================================
This cool country and this calm forenoon,
Singing birds and murmuring stream—
Far from that noise and dust of the concrete city.
This recline in half sun and half shade,
By the blooming willows, in the grassy yard of my lonely wooden cottage,
Is princely and priceless...
'As I recall the scene-- those weak, naked,
Indian laborers on a blazing summer’s day
In the heat of brick kiln.'
Reading an American poet, and imagining his horse ride
By some dark woods on a snowy day.
With a bowl of plane water,
And a view of a very high elevated, pillar less, blue-like roof,
And heavy woods’ walling all around the town.
And adding spice into the fantasies-fun
With the musical memories of my love-days.
Fingers of light pierced the clouds caressing the moors
with life giving warmth, purples, browns and greens of
heathers mingled, blended, in a union of beauty. Yellow
of gorse splashed in the sultry, hazy spectre of natures
superb canvas. The dry stone walling lay sporadic, lost,
decaying in time and memory, the hardy moorland sheep
stumbled from blade to blade, in the breeze they used the
walls as shade. Golden plovers dipped and dived the call
of pee weet pee weet echoed in the stillness, the Peregrine
hovered with silent wings and sunlit eye. Those fingers of
light walked the hillside highlighting the chalk outcrops
on craggy reaches as if new laden snow. Black pools of
peaty water dot themselves borne of winters starkness,
it is a beauty that holds both eye and heart, a picture
painted for the soul. A place where all blends and the
crofter wears no watch only the sun and moon to follow
and the footsteps of the rambler sleeps in the fragrance
of the heather.
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