some pains
carry a weight
so great that
they rake up
the land, wear
it down
like a war & if
your bones
could speak they
would creak like
a dog left out
in the cold,  
howling into
the wind
whilst everyone
else too
burdened
by their
own minds
doesn't hear the
cries, they are
a sound
in the background,
a white noise
we've learned to
avoid.

i have
locked myself
into a cocoon.
a shell, a
crescent moon.
wind
is battering
against the
walls, shelling
seeds into husks.
the day feels
long and this
song will
have to wait
until the sun
comes. till it
enters the
cracks
in wood
and skin and
allows me
to imagine
again how it feels
to be human.

you let
the pills
flow
down
your neck
and wait.
wait for the life
to grow
and the
pain to
slow.
wait for
that feeling
when you
will know.
but certainty
is a story.
a distant
object
bobbing
across
the current.
and that
comfort
becomes an
absence
so deep it
resounds
like cymbals
in your
ears as you
sleep.

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can't sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry 'We are ripe, reap us!' and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.

you are lost,
     as lost as the next in line
at the store.
you are trapped
      in thoughts of war, and
environmental horrors
that are to befall us all.
you want to run
       to the edge of the field,
and peel the skin from
the base of your heel & peer in,
to find the glitch,
     because something is amiss.
the arguments don't resolve,
they become a hum
   that course down walls
like rain. some of us pray,
turn to religion,
   others look to games &
science fiction, all to drown out
the thought that
  the balance of good and evil has
swung & we're
     not quite sure which side we're on.

as a girl it didn't
occur
         that blossom
would fade
from pink cotton to
damp,
brown mulch,
to a congealed lump
my mother would
    painstakingly pull from
  full pockets at the
end of the day.
  its bloom consumed
by rain,
  and left to decay,  
its perfume a memory
that filled the air,
that with
   time you start to
        doubt was even there.