It’s a mercy,
A painful tingling
That wasn’t worth it:
Thinking we knew
Where this was all going
Murdered it
Right before our eyes;
Now,
There’s just silence;
We all move along;
The Followers have been following,
The sand blows the sliver of a song,
The horizon is three quarters around us,
A slice of pie,
A wall of rusty darkness,
The sand never stops altogether;
Wandering since the End came,
Forcing us out of our homes,
Alone at first,
We three –
Mum, dad, and me –
Came across another family
Rushed out of house;
Stones from tombs are all that remain,
Sickening crunches beneath our feet
As we travel across more than time
And distance;
The resistance we meet
Surrounds us
Like a warm wind before a storm;
Water is the only thing we trust now,
Having gone without her for so long,
But even she –
Dancing as the bumblebee
Once did
Across violet petals
And violent breezes –
Deceives us
At the edge of our sight
And the tips of our tongues;
And so we walk,
Trusting in each step
That we not plummet into that darkness
We’ve come across deep inside
The shallow eyes
Of those who fell before us,
And who we pass by
Without a hello
Or a goodbye;
Each step a miracle,
We have no more energy to even mumble
Supports
To one another,
The only sound
Is the laughing clown
Of that Bedouin we found
But did not keep,
He follows in our wake,
Followers following,
Like a snowflake behind a waft of heat;
Bronze to all our sides,
Like the shield of God itself
Bastion against the corrupted love we made,
The blood in our veins now a corrosive agent,
A diabolical remnant
Swimming through the tubes of life,
Seducing it to take a bite
Of that which shares their colour
Only under sunlight;
There is no more life,
Our other family –
Whom we’ve grown to endure,
Who,
Unlike past wanderers,
Is actually trying to get somewhere
And hasn’t given up
And tried to take our lives in our sleep –
Follows us,
Followers following;
Tacitly we turn,
Hoping there to be some kind of utility
In taking the same finite steps towards
Infinity,
But I’ve lost count;
I silently denounce,
Without even raising my head,
The Dead God who brought it down upon us:
Why?
Cares were on their way,
Hope was hardening the clay of world unity,
Progress was being made towards green and away from grey;
Then the Blast of All Silence shredded the forever-blue sky,
Searing it white,
Most of us died upon the sight
Of black flashing past and through neon orange light,
Then everything adopted its colour,
So hostile it began to devour
Itself;
Silver-black tentacles,
The aimless swaying of an anemone
Rising up out of the crater,
Its myriad nickel lungs,
Like the lips of a robot,
Heaving in massive gulps of air,
Releasing a violet powder
That suffocates all those who breathe
Within its proximity;
We three managed to escape:
Camping,
We were already far away,
Dad saw the video of the Blast of All Silence
Careening through the air,
We –
Mum and me –
Saw it from the cliff’s edge,
It shook the air;
“What’s happening?” I asked as quiet as a trembling leaf,
“I don’t know, Sweetie,” he said retracting his fear,
“But it will all be okay,
I promise,”
But how do you know that?
I wondered;
So we drove as far as we could,
Off-road for most of it,
Until our front wheels blew up,
Pierced by deadwood,
Sleeping was no option,
At least not for a while,
So on
And on
And on we walked,
And slowly the flora died
And the desert arrived;
We told tales about things we’d see again:
Friends,
Family,
But our jesting unnerved more than it aided,
So we grew quiet
And frightened;
The End was never supposed to actually arrive,
That was something saved only for others,
For the old,
The bad,
The liars,
Every day we lied –
My dad, my mum, and I –
About how we were preparing for
The Blast of All Silence,
It came
And I can’t say mum was surprised,
Dad’s eyes belied his wildness,
He tried to hide it
Behind the chest of a guy,
A man,
But we woman see through it,
We know men better than they know themselves,
We simply allow them to believe their own stories,
We test them,
Enquire upon them,
Wondering
All the while
Of a future together:
Will we be safe
That is
And always will be
The key
To open anima up,
To unlock
Her true love,
Her honest affection
So red in face
It crawls
Through pulsing lips
Into the minds of those men who can do nothing but sit and take it,
Who feel more than ever
True masculine power,
So few of whom ever touch this feminine,
This honey of life-works,
This Beyond Danger;
So his words,
Absence of the female inside them
Die like sperm left on a cushion;
Mum says nothing,
So on we tread,
The wandering mend with each step
Having accepted that each step
Carries them closer to the end;
The sun is darker now,
A blood orange placed upon a white canvas,
The painter seeking the high contrast
Only found between the
Presence and the Absence;
But it is cold,
No heat reaches our feet anymore,
Not from wind nor blood,
Very often I forget I am walking,
The Blast of All Silence still heaves,
Like the factories of industrial Germany
Or America,
Names that no longer have any character
Or meaning;
We are all brothers and sisters now,
The Blast of All Silence
Delivered unto us
Through its violet dust
A searing truth:
Heartbeats connect us
But do not prove us connected,
Our souls made manifest only through
Espionage of our selves,
And a complete doubt about what we
Think we
Know.