Rowan

Rowan Dec 2023

You've had this thought before
The flowers on the window sill
The distant sound of a radio
The streets
The grass
The stars

The sky's dome above your head
Everything is normal on Earth
Exactly as it is now
Look up at the sky
God is in his heaven
God is in his heaven
A god who's very very silent

Home awaits
A beautiful serene place
Of mystery
And peace
The one thing you will never find again
All the love and patience of your friends
The tenderness you feel

You no longer live there
Those times are gone
And so are those people
Why did you come here?
Why are you still here?
You don't know

The freedom of finality
That's all you have now
The great see-through world
All things bright
Only you remain
You against the nothingness

It's not fire
It's not ash
Everything is calm
You can only sense the shape of it
A pit opening up in your stomach
A blank space
With no point of reference
Something that has always been there
A new reality
Barely out of sight
Where only one type of motion is possible
The motion of a human throat swallowing
A throat into which the world will vanish

What strange words to celebrate a new world

No cities
No oceans
No mountains

You can breathe now

And finally

https://theswayofmountains.bandcamp.com/track/clinging-to-the-collapse

#nothingness #cling #collapse #finally #streets #grass #stars #god #silent #reality

Rowan May 2023

empty spaces

community of concerned silence
submerged in beautiful bliss
security through pristine violence
indulging from the precipice
a legitimized and hopeful sphere
where nostalgia is taught
tribes of the disappeared
in collective coffin cot
dirge of docile disconnect
floating in the familiar flow
gleaming life failure effect
reflected from the calming glow
an emptiness we can't describe
with closed eyes and unmade calls
we yearn for a wider inside
even when sentience crawls

a pause in the extremities
the precompiled thought exchange
warm welcome obscenities
ransacked and rearranged
inconstant conversation
with the void of sudden stares
replaced with relaxation
and the comfort of the glare
delightful streams assault the skull
sterile, safe, and bright
depleted and desperately dull
swinging sea of peppered light
the inconvenience is self-installed
the underlying illusion undone
shrink down our huffing halls
the idle universe has won

the enemy is deep within
performance of a billion waves
swallowed smiles and sheared skin
how the happy hive behaves
the veil will protect you
from unintentional dismay
regret imprinted with the hue
of a shrouded gargled gray
surprise of the vibrating static
a pain we all outgrew
signals stuttering erratic
in the calm unending queue
the awkwardness we will away
while embracing tomorrow
we can't escape a single day
of scroll of want of follow

why would we even care to change
we live like leaking taps
neatly cubed nicely contained
clinging to the collapse
the greatest source of doubt
counts steadily in the wrong direction
abandoned from within without
the violent means of introspection
calm comfortable victimhood
moments for the self to shine
a debt distinctly understood
children of the copied divine
the grind has never been as grand
to constantly be seen and heard
the perfectly designed brand
the flashing the absurd

the algorithms all agree
with the incompleteness of your thoughts
what is not yours and cannot be
the gift that can't be bought
the law of things obtained and kept
protected by the shared veneer
in the screams of squares we slept
buoyant in unconscious fear
collectively brushed aside
wisdom warped and blurred
broken rhythms often denied
desynchronizing word for word
the norm and the exception
the youthful smile reign
the stabs of asking questions
in the murmuring mundane

a looming forest fire
roams nervously in the system
flooded in the mirror's ire
both perpetrator and victim
the limbed and headed machine
will do anything for a sensation
the chance of an ideal dream
a simple moment of elation
the monuments of the worst
uniquely ignored and neglected
simultaneously blessed and cursed
meaninglessness perfected
you are the cause of your exclusion
from the well of laughs and joy
you are the smirking intrusion
that our captors now employ

into the hollow depths
we parasites in paradise
preconceptions born in breaths
the humming art in artifice
this isn't how we pictured it
but even stars fall apart
leer in rooms temporarily lit
slump into a fresh new start
the product of the insurrection
ensured in acts of war
a humble impersonation
of the lies we’ve told before
inevitability in the present tense
we comfortably comply
the taste of innate inconsequence
under a slowly sinking sky

vast but empty spaces
surrounded by white walls
severely friendly faces
abundance of eyeballs
a perfect new cliché
wearing thinly concealed scenes
a planet full of time's decay
illuminated by our screens
another day rejected
through the blank pages we pursue
the banal and the expected
from the last crumbling few
the doomed attempt to disappear
not for a lack of trying
and so the final souvenir
is the hard work in dying

Rowan Jan 2021

Sun Light

Light of all lights
Tremendous treasure
Wonderfully bright
Cyclical measure
Beams of a king
Twinkling center
Warmth that stings
Biological inventor

Thermal life
Luminescence east
Day full of strife
A temporary lease
Slow red death
Cold setting west
Heated breath
Winter's chest

Constant burn
Behind the clouds
Orbital churn
Of planets round
Certain tomorrow
Brand new start
Galvanizing glow
Insulated heart

Father and mother
Nature and crown
Scorching lover
Setting down
Brightest eye
Plasma sphere
Radiant blue sky
Violent veneer

#sun #light

Rowan Aug 2019

Iemand soos jy

Op hierdie aarde, groen en blou
Met torings wat die lug uit grou
In elke huis waar mens dalk bly
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
In wye winkels en krom kerke
In nommers en vergete merke
Waar ryk sweef en arm lei
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
In stede, woude, see en woestyn
In alles, geen, grof en fyn
In luuks, skaars, bont en plein
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
In winter, lente, somer, herfs
Met albei vuur en skadu bederf
Waar ook al maan en son mag skyn
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
Waar sterre sing en sonne lag
Omring met komberse van die nag
Waar ou gode en planete gly
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
In ou legendes en sprokies verhale
In dooie sang en in lewende tale
In woorde wat die hart oop sny
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
In gister se groot verlate vlug
In môre se onmeetbare sug
In die nou wat ons so graag vermy
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy
In slaap te dig en drome swart
In die wandel en wonder van die hart
In seer, troos, kwaad en bly
Sal ek nooit weer iemand kry soos jy

#afrikaans #love

Rowan Jan 2019

Nothing

With nothing in mind, on the soft green ground
While gazing around inside of a dream
Squinting of Sun, inhaling of sounds
Relaxed, next to a running river's gleam
Serene and sedated, the rustling of leafs
A lease - eternal, an ease inside
A polished, pure and perplexing peace
I slowly sway into the swallowing sky

Sounds of the gush and the wingless glide
Divided between blue and beautiful bright
A meeting of mountains and stars magnified
Below - a haze. Above - the great light
The delight of the earth, protruding and proud
Shrouded silhouettes and gorges that glow
Maps of the sky, echoers of sound
Transport me down to the wet below

Floating on top of the swirling blue salt.
Exalted beyond the liquid haze.
The deepest doors of this massive vault.
A conversation with the warping waves.
A daze of darkness in this alien waste.
Embraced in unknown - pulling me down.
A captive buoyancy with calm erased.
The essence of life, in which I will drown.

Finally, walls, blank and opaque.
The ache of vast indifferent time.
With a failed past comes a future vague.
Measured only by its dangling decline.
Maligned touches of world-less colour.
The collar of emptiness. The forever nothing.
Blacked out details unnecessarily smothered.
A ruined illusion of caring for something.

#dream #peaceful #mountains #ocean #river

Rowan Jan 2018

A Perfect Day

Near a town of history untold
Where everyone knows each name
Wooden behemoths - obliviously old
Each unique but each the same
It was meant to be a perfect day
Of tranquility through the trees
Instead, the sky is brood with grey
And the leafs flow as they please
Alone, in nature's splendor spilled
In a rainy wilderness, seldom seen
The birds and insects grow suddenly still
In a spread silence of the green
Like eyes embedded in your back
You sense the stare of something sour
The mood hurries to horrid black
As you quiver into a cower
In bending branches blended
Creeping in creases - camouflaged
Nature's imbalance to be amended
In the forest's full mirage
Witness a terror appearing
Frantically floating from afar
Emerged in echoes and vaguely veering
Black, bleak and bizarre
A malevolent, monstrous maw
Snarls of hunger, habit, and hate
A malodor of meat, reeking raw
A violently increasing heart rate
From frozen still to fearfully shaking
You are manically mesmerised
Your pupils promptly dilating
As you and the beast lock eyes
Your meaningless attempt to run
From a stride to a collapse
The beams above crown the sun
As the twigs around you snap
A soar of pain as you hit the ground
Chest cavity cracked open
As you faint, you hear the sound
Of a language never spoken.
Gutted and gargling gore
Eaten by nature's nightmare
Convulsing on a forest floor
Indifference chokes the air
It's just another perfect day
Of tranquility in the trees
The rain has stopped, the leafs still sway
With the cooling, comfortable breeze

#forest #monster #trees #nature

Rowan Aug 2017

The Room

I think through exactly nothing.
The nothing of permanent plans.
The crushing ambiance - humming.
The hereafter is held in my hands.
I am anchored in absolute anthracite.
In the travel towards a tame tomorrow.
Surrendered sight. Goodbye. Great night.
But slumber's stare I cannot borrow.

I could feel fresh and rested.
When the sun returns to wealth.
Instead, my mirrored mind is bested.
By none other than itself.
A bucket list - boundless and long.
A billion books for each day.
The distraction of the sterile songs.
All to suspend the swarming sway.

The daylight waits for no creature.
And prepares the slumber song.
But darkness is a wonderful teacher.
I wish this waning clock was wrong.
As long as I have a moving mind.
In the richest and poorest of weather.
A waste in rest I'll invariably find.
In the Neverlanded nether.

When absolutely nothing's wrong.
When Time doesn't spill its touch.
To procrastination, I belong.
Am I asking for too much?
To grow into or fade out of.
The ideal temperature and tuck.
My eyelids cannot shut enough.
Outside the celestial flow, I'm stuck.

What if I never dream again?
Uncertainty honors each night.
What if I just roll around and then,
I am welcomed to morning's light?
What if I've lost the built in will,
To even further bother?
What if no book, no bed, no pill.
Could satisfy rest's hunger?

At best, this future is now failed.
Prevailed pause to a downhill stroll.
Detailed, another mated stale.
Thumb up into the endless scroll.
Roaming legs, wakeful brain.
In this domain, I'm just a guest.
Just close your eyes and try again.
I, alone create this terrible test.

At worst, this is my nightly fate.
Renewed again and again.
Much too little, much too late.
Still, awake, I still remain.
Nothing will solve the stalemate.
Nothing can stifle this absence of thirst.
What a terrible plan to perpetuate.
What a horrible night to have a curse.

But just as I accept my due.
I've somehow ended my eternal night.
My eyes glazed in Sandman glue.
A miraculous recovery of sight.
I awake, escaped from a sleepless doom.
But tonight I suffer the same.
If I do not substitute something soon.
I will only have myself to blame.

I actually sleep fine now.

#sleep #dream #bed #insomnia