#volcanic
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.
Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor
as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring
hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea, boils an amnion
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships
of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs
labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away
to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such
alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely
neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,
an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 7:15 AM UTC
Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to stay its upward ******
One errant step is all it takes
to breach that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless wanderer
who fails to guard his path.
Fragile calderas also roil
buried in darkest hollows of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in molten pools
of self-consuming misery.
To dress and salve our wounds
we sow gardens of reconciliation within
with beauty, trust and reason
and bow to gods of grace and solace.
But a despot’s studied eye
knows just how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot
and reason has no district.
Sisters and brothers of our flesh I pray
we find a holy and transforming alchemy
to convert our heat to light
and shield our sacred calderas
from enemies that stalk us from within.
July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 12:30 PM UTC
Do not laugh and mock nature of how it is,
for it can bring disaster whenever it wants and how it wants,
from volcanic eruptions to tsunamis,
we are nothing compared to it.
Our weapons today won't stop avalanches and earthquakes,
nature is far more powerful and stronger then us then we think.
Of course, there are people that know this,
but some may think that humans,
are stronger than nature.
In what way really?
As I see it if nature makes up her mind she could swallow us all at once if she decides to do it right this instant.
But she won't, know why?
Because nature is fair and knows how to control herself,
but humans aren't so we only know one thing,
and that is,
destroy.
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 10:46 AM UTC
i watched the smoke loom into the sky.
you and i, we don't pay it any mind.
the blood is rushing to my face—
vesuvius who?
a.d. sixty-two: an earthquake shook the ground.
that was seventeen years ago, and we are twenty now.
four days ago the shakes started again
but i don't mind the sound.
i close my eyes and i am gone
the room is full of heat
volcanic ash and tephra and gas—
forever, we're asleep.
Sep 21, 2017
Sep 21, 2017 at 7:52 PM UTC
Here we go again:
I get the choice between
fight or flight, but I
chose to remain frozen.
Icebergs congeal in
my bloodstream. I'm freezing on
the inside, erupting
molten lava from my pores.
Uncontrollable magma
falls from igneous eyelashes;
swallowing the inferno
like a glass of apple cider
that's traveled down the wrong pipe.
Coping with emotion
is something that my self
cannot handle.
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 10:01 PM UTC
Drop my heart into a volcano
Let my LAVA erupt...
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 12:43 PM UTC