The ground had rumbled for quite some time
It was only a minor quake,
The people grumbled, it came and went
But it kept them all awake,
‘They say there was a volcano here
A billion years ago,
But it’s long since dead, the geologists said,
And there’ll be no lava flow.’

They’d built the suburb on rising ground,
And roads, right up to the peak,
The ground was rocky and unforgiving
The soil was grey and weak,
So little grew on that rising crest
Just the odd saltbush or so,
They couldn’t drill through the rock beneath
To help their bushes grow.

I would venture out and would take the air
When the house cooled down at night,
But always felt there was something there
That would make me feel uptight,
I felt the rumble, under my feet
It was like a muffled roar,
And I thought a whimsical thought one night,
It was like an old man’s snore.

One night I wandered up to the crest
And I saw two bushes move,
They seemed to tremble and flutter there
Just above a ball shaped groove,
The rumble stopped as I stood and watched
From under the starlit skies,
The bushes opened to crystal orbs,
Just like a pair of eyes.

They fixed me there in their crystal stare
And I didn’t dare to breathe,
The summit started to shake and move,
And then it began to heave,
The houses built on the crest fell down
It was like a huge hiccup,
And I fell tumbling to the ground
As the Mountain God stood up!

David Lewis Paget

It took me months to realize, that sometimes
I wish she hadn't died.
I held her head as life slipped from her eyes
as her heart fluttered its last bumping butterflies.

She really was my only family
Now I sit alone,
in this big wooden house
just as it is
hollow & empty.

i am a girl of storm, ash, thorns, sunset and fire.

let me kiss you with my lightning tongue,
flickering and fast, shocking.
i'll char you into oblivion with the very wandering fingers of my soul,
like creeping fog.

i'm like the lingering ozone before thunder,
waiting,
i am the churning in your stomach.
i am the very pounding downpour, ripping your skin
like eagerly torn paper envelopes,
searching for something like a soul, an essence.
drowning your small bones in my
watery hands;
is this ***** or rain?
it all burns
almost the same,
to someone skinless and raw.

i am grey-lipped,
like some elaborate Persian ashtray,
sitting on a magenta carpet
stained with innocence and old perfume spills.
i am a
steel rose,
with a red, drunken face
growing within the small torments of
a plastic vase.

i am the thorns that sit uncomfortably in your skin,
i dig deep, scratching at your marrow
with my very own teeth,
trying desperately to find substance in your
emptiness
and vacant human flesh.

i am sunset,
drowning the horizon in one million different
kinds of wine.
my soul lays down sprawling on top of the sighing ocean,
and it disappears as dwindling light for the
thick,
forest trees
strong and rooted like
womens legs.

i am fire,
burning like pine-wood embers,
creating dark holes out of off-white cotton bedsheets,
dotting them like black and sienna burnt constellations.
i am scorching,
dancing,
i am vivid,
flaming.
i am soft.
i am raining.

i am a girl of storm, ash, thorns, sunset and fire.