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emlyn lua Nov 2019
He would come to me in early morning,
When the sun barely graced the horizon,
Raise an arm to brush against my branches,
Take a seat at my roots, pat my bark
And read, out loud, a whisper,
(but trees can hear greater than humans)
A story about a forest that was sentient
On a distant, alien planet.
(you truly don’t need to look so far)
He would edit as he went, breaking off –
To change this phrase or that,
Shuffle up a paragraph,
Scribble out a speech.

Some days it was a page,
Others it was hundreds.

Most days he would talk to me, ask my opinion.
He would smile to himself, unaware,
He cannot hear my replies.

I have always been stubborn.
I am the only seedling to have sprouted this side of the river;
My resolve is enough to keep me strong in barren soil.
As he read to me, I found purpose:
Move.
Yes, I grow towards the sun,
But that is what humans would call a reflex
(trees move much slower than humans,
you see, they have no motivation)
This human, this creature, gave me motivation:
To go beyond myself, my being.
He gave me what it is to be human.

It was a leafless day when I found my first success.
The waving grass glittered in early sunlight,
First frost of the year.
He had sat with me that morning,
Breaths clouding albicant in the air,
A cushion to keep out the cold and the hard-packed soil.
His reading was punctuated by sniffs and sharp breathing,
Trailing off to stare out over the park.
He stroked my bark with a gloved hand in his hush.
“Do you think people will notice my bruise?”
He touched his fingers to a splash across his cheek,
Mottled red, blue, purple, brown.
A new word, a word not spoken by trees:
Bruise.
He sat long in silence, then stood and left;
He did not look back.

That day I strained and screamed at my branches to move,
If I had been human I would have been scarlet-faced,
Brow crumpled,
Spittle flying from my lips
(or so I imagine from stories)
But I am not human.
But I moved.
An inch, a swish of branches,
Untouched by breeze or wandering hands,
I moved.

By night I was walking.
The world is so much bigger than I imagined.

I did not walk far,
Merely to the crest of the hill,
But from there I could see twinkling lights stretched out
Like stars of the ground,
Like something from a dream.

I settled back by the river in time for dawn,
Anticipation sending frissons through my branches.
What would I do when he came in the morning?
Run a branch through his hair like the lovers in his stories?
Surprise him, tickle him, make him laugh,
(he had not laughed in so long)
Twist branches into words: ‘hello’, ‘I come in peace’,
‘I love you’.

Would he be afraid?
Would he think himself ill, or drugged,
As in Chapter 14?
In his stories he hopes for harmony,
But, tree though I may be,
I know that theory and reality are different.
He has taught me something else:
Fear.

He has not returned.

I have watched children grow and sprout children of their own
And he has not returned.

I do not move.
I am waiting.
(trees have patience longer than human lifespans)

It is dawn.
It is summer, the sun comes early,
Too early for humans to be up and about,
Even the fast ones in their harsh neon.
And yet -
There is a man, pruned in the way that humans become over time.
He raises an arm, smiles as he feels the brush of my leaves.
There is something familiar about this gesture.
He sits,
Nestled in that most sacred of spots where no one has sat for a very, very long time.
He reads,
A story about a forest on a distant planet,
A forest that is sentient.
I listen.
And I do not move.
emlyn lua Sep 2019
my house a shambles, clutter every=where;
I know there’s beauty somewhere underneath
the half-done projects, all in disrepair - -
! I stumble on a knife with missing sheath,
my body | scored | by everyday-turned-teeth.
some days a stifling fog will manifest:
in limp fatigue, I dream a lily wreath,
again, again, the morbidly obsessed,
all • move•ment • choke • sup•pressed.
emlyn lua Sep 2019
Daffodil, daffodil, can’t you see?
I love you sweet flower,
But you don’t love me.
You know me not, so I suppose,
I am but a mirror,
Blank as shadows.

Without people I am mute,
Mere consciousness,
A playerless lute.
Around too many others
I am a scramble,
Their presence smothers.

Daffodil, daffodil, look not listen,
I am a poor imitation
But my eyes, they glisten.
I am nothing at all of my own:
Composed of distant fragments,
Patchwork of all I’ve known.

I have nothing you could call a true voice;
The words that I speak
Are not mine of choice.
I love you, I love you,
I can never say,
Unless you do too.
emlyn lua Sep 2019
Denmark’s a prison
Where all are guards and all are inmates -
I must be the Queen
For I am held in chains,
Caught by the currents of my own thoughts;
Alas – I never learned to swim.
I am an echo chamber,
A thought is a ball kicked over and over and over and
Can I not pass law to cease this bruisement?
Goal! I speak,
And my thought is no longer contained within me
But in the world, circling the pates of the court.

Sweet, your lover calls you,
Even now;
As the battle with corruption corrupted you.
Justice, you promised me;
I no longer believe in justice.
I loved him, though his love was a leash;
You took from me my cage and now I cage myself.
Scheming and plotting against schemers and plotters –
No longer knowing ourselves as once we did,
No longer viewing the world as what it is –
If only I had seen!
You would not have abandoned me now.

You will not come again?
You will not come again.
The King is fallible,
The usurper of God is not omnipotent;
I see the traces of that which he strives to hide.
His mask is good, true, but –
A mask cannot hide all:
England is the trickster’s smiling blade,
I know so.
I mourn you, as I mourn all that I know:
This ends with the destruction of a nation.

I miss your presence beside me.
Your soft eyes, looking only at my face,
At my face only.
I was safe with you.
Hearts mirrored in forbidden affections;
Switch places with me,
Let us not be ****** for desire.
Marriage is man and wife, man and wife,
You saw the lies.

Kick, quick, pick the flowers,
One for each noble skeleton.
I show their secrets in petals and songs:
The language of the mad, the insane, the crazed fools –
Fool I am, I see all, hear all, know all.
Hang their weeds in the weep of the willow,
Cursed crowns of concealed corruption.

I reach –

A tear breaks –

And I am overwhelmed by swirling thoughts,
Sinking deeper into the abyss of my mind.
Smiling trickster, smiling blade – Pretty Ophelia!
A will not come again.
I will not come again.
No one will mourn me,
There will be no one to remember:
This ends with the destruction of a nation.
emlyn lua Sep 2019
I am both alive and dead,
He who trapped me once kept me fed.
I scrabble and scratch at the locks,
I am both alive and dead.
A cadaver in a funeral box,
A vampire, a zombie, a paradox.
I am both alive and dead,
He who trapped me once kept me fed.
emlyn lua Sep 2019
-recovered from the papers of codename ‘Wolf Spider’, spin doctor for the Purist resistance-

his Machinery is glitCHing: o so human
imperfect beings produce imperfect creations
yes, I believe: a jealous god creates warFull people
metal is flesh is plastic is flesh is metal –
hybrid creatures, and yet one species only

to come so far and yet still be at the basic
his steel claws are tipped with choking poison
recovered from the corpse of Socrates himself
war is fitting: slaughter of life
for the sake of stealing Death

his Eyes unfaithful to himself, he is not the only observer
the naïf does not read the Terms and Conditions
of his own (not his own) body
throughout my life I have seen the necrosis
caused by blind faith in humanity’s humanity

am I stuck in the old ways? perhaps that is true,
but in the Old Days of the Old Ways you could tell with a look
what was born and what was spawned from a factory
only the brain remains, they have not yet found
a way to binarise my soul
if anyone could tell me how im supposed to make things italic on here i would heavily appreciate it (i had an account years ago i remember it being like asterisks but that didnt seem to work?)
emlyn lua Sep 2019
Aphrodite resides in my heart.
She has been there since I wished
with no hope of solution
for loneliness to be gone.

She did that.
She Did That.

My love is an ocean yet I
I keep it in the pearlescence
of a shell I found on the shore.
Does my goddess purse her lovely lips
when she feels my fear?

Fear
of vulnerability, goddess,
of your power over me.

What is worship without fear?
Awful, terrific, exposed
to the mercy of your torment.

Perhaps soon I shall meet another
who knows the ache of her in the chest
when we look into each other’s eyes.
I pray for someone who has an ocean
like mine, boundless and full of life.

Ah, then we could mingle our waters
until two oceans become one
and proud Aphrodite can swim there
guiding the currents to where they need to be.
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