Una sola carne
Two become one flesh
Non approfittarne
Keeping true love fresh

           ~when love precipitates, selfishness evaporates~


© 2020 by Mark Toney. All rights reserved.

Even if your planets
should align,
the way to her heart
does not begin between her legs.

An uprooted tree lies ebbing in the street.
The one who pledged everyone with a refuge
is herself in exigent need.

People come, see the fallen one.

Not a soul seems to be concerned.
Zero, zilch, nada, none.

They don't remember
those cloistered, sizzling infernos of June
those solitary, shivering nights of witchy new moons

and those

sodden, sultry volleys of pouring monsoons

when they, like sprayed bedbugs, ran helter-skelter
with the beast of disarray at their sorry heels -
snarling callously at all their jet-set culture,
structure and order

and

when all and sundry went slapdash
…haphazard

that stalwart of timber
gave them reassuring shelter.

…no fine print, no strings…

❉


Today, when in the aftermath of storm and rain
her generous framework lays mortally drained
there is no one who would even stop
to look for a while
let alone bestow a precious drop
of life.

❉

In this progressive society –
dynamic, forward-looking, revolutionary –

each enterprising personality
is interred beneath umpteen layers of conceit
and on the assay of fulfilment
estimates the value of the being.

Room and pillar
Let me be your guiding shaft
Atmospheric pressure
Let me be your natural draft

Atticus Finch
Let me be your inner last laugh
Cold determiner
Let me be your unsuspecting half

The sign in the window says
Closed until the light of day

Broken bone
Let me be your sling and marrow
Agitated Polaire
Let me be your tight-laced narrow

Confounded Plath
Let me be your children's tomorrow
Germ warfare
Let me be your biological sorrow

The word on the street is
Nothing's gonna change until the light of day

Open minefield
Let me be your measured step
***** mother
Let me be your usual suspect

Unwanted child
Let me be the tears when you last wept
Unwanted immigrant
Let me be the ground where you last slept

The writing on the wall signals
Critical times until the light of day

lumière du jour
Chérie

the world is colourless
colourless, because it's abandoned
colourless, because it's empty
colourless, because it's dead
colourless, because salvation requires there to be something left to salvage.

selfishness, greed, the lies we told,
there will always be consequence
there is no one left to pin the blame on
because now, we are all guilty.

but there is hope.

after we are gone,
it will finally rain.

after we are gone,
the sky will slowly clear.

after we are gone,
a green stem will grow from the earth.

after we are gone,
nature will survive.

after we are gone,
the world will bring itself back to the prosperity
that it had before we came.

after we are gone,
the world will reconcile
it will return to what it was
without us there to destroy it again.

because, before we were gone,
we forgot that it was not the nature that depended on us
but we the ones that depended on nature.

perhaps it was time for us
to take our leave.

perhaps it was for the best
that humanity was its own fatal flaw,
its own destruction.

I find myself at the bottom of my pit again; dirt beneath my fingernails.
I rip at the ground, frantically looking for my way out, ignoring the rope above my head.

I scrape and claw at the earth.
My eyes are fixed on the ground, even as a hand extends itself to pull me out.
Ignoring its offer to help, I keep digging.

I don't know what I'm looking for, but I know what it feels like.
I've known it before.
I know it now.
It's standing on the edge if my pit, reaching down to pull me out.

I'm covered in the stain of of overturned earth.
My arms are heavy with exhaustion.
My mind is clear of the fog that had consumed it.

I can turn away from the depths I have clawed my way towards.
I look up to the pure rays of the sun, bathing my stained body in clean light.

He is standing there, but his hand is withdrawn.
He steps back from the edge and I strain to see him.
I am overcome with a desperate need to hear his voice.

"How did I get here?", I ask with anguish in my voice.

"You dug it yourself. Now get yourself out."

When we are breathing,
we share in our breath.

People are self-seeking,
and unless we play with
pragmatics, we can’t help it.
Yet we are helpless in
how bounteous we are.

When we are breathing,
we share in our breath,
and when we die,
we share in our death.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow (Alek the Poet)

you think that flowers are pretty and the forest
smells fresh and they are all made for you
just for you. you think that the green grass is soft
and the seas and skies and sand are all for you.
you think that nature is generous and kind
and good and pure just like you

i also wonder about humanity’s ever-increasing
records of stupidity, their eyes blind with anger
entitlement suspicion frustration the heat of rage
miniature suns burning and blistering and
destroying everything they see touch anything
in reach, thinking that all is theirs and theirs is all

they don’t see the blood on the floor and the
bodies lying all around. they step on them like
pillows on a road, rolling over them like the stones
they are, don’t see the teeth and eyes and edges
lying all around, all the traps biding their time,
waiting to crush a few pebbles

the true monster has yet to show, eyes shut
but not asleep, dormant but not oblivious
waiting in the shadows of the air and the black
days that the humans pass by like the stones they
are, blood pooling bodies rotting, and the humans
can’t care won’t care couldn’t care less as they
continue to fall

time is ticking and so is their patience, a silent
bomb waiting to be free of the grasps of dirt
and soil soiling its body, when finally nature strikes
back, strikes hard, as the humans fall ten by ten,
grass blades flying and petals dying, when nature
reclaims what has been stolen

nature will come back, and erase humanity like
moss on a stone, eating and destroying and
poisoning their already heavy hearts and souls,
dragging them over down into the earth, till
their blood has replaced theirs and their bones
have melted back where they came from,
and humans finally realise the moment just before
they fall from the earth, that it was all in their minds

they never owned nature, they were the ones that
needed her

nature never needed humans

they’re just mouldy stones at the bottom of a
fish tank long forgotten