03-23-2025, 06:33 AM
And the World Hastened itself towards Death
A tiny wooden sword
Clutched between my index and middle finger
Balances on grey nails and paper cuts and
Words that blister on weathered skin
That send scores of history through white
fingerprints embedded in coloured blood
That drinks from the pauper's cup, that tastes of freedom and salvation, that
rules the lands after the bones lay decaying, fragmenting into clouds of dust and
broken nebulas, scattering wisdom and fear that lies dormant underneath the front
door, a gentle beast that needs no collar around its neck except for the legislations
printed by ruthless hands shaped like the roots of a willow tree,
swaying over fate with its head bowed in fake, graceful submission, like a praying mantis
placing its head in prostration on a blade of grass
The shadows highlight the silver dewdrops decorating the wings of a
moth caught in a spider web, light blue, bulging eyes, reflecting the sky, a tattered morsel
of the universe replaying a movie on a filmy TV screen
The wooden sword pierces paper and tongues, slices the periods off the end of sentences,
and makes the tablecloth bleed red doilies
that blossom into roses, a sweet fragrance of longing and nostalgia for the benevolent status
of petals carpeting the golden courtyard by milk-white feet, like a dove caught in mid flight,
the moon in the bottom of his palm tattooed with the ink from crushed bones and green leaves
that decorate golden hair, derive sustenance, their sun, give birth to feeble sprouts
that cannot lift their heads.
Saturn tilted on its axis and offered its ring as it proposed to the sun, and the wooden sword
split the galaxy down the middle, left it lying like a potato bug on its back, its feet peddling in the air,
its antennae twitching with incoherence, searching for a sound that does not reach the ears,
and a foothold no longer there, like a dying moth taking flight.
A tiny wooden sword
Clutched between my index and middle finger
Balances on grey nails and paper cuts and
Words that blister on weathered skin
That send scores of history through white
fingerprints embedded in coloured blood
That drinks from the pauper's cup, that tastes of freedom and salvation, that
rules the lands after the bones lay decaying, fragmenting into clouds of dust and
broken nebulas, scattering wisdom and fear that lies dormant underneath the front
door, a gentle beast that needs no collar around its neck except for the legislations
printed by ruthless hands shaped like the roots of a willow tree,
swaying over fate with its head bowed in fake, graceful submission, like a praying mantis
placing its head in prostration on a blade of grass
The shadows highlight the silver dewdrops decorating the wings of a
moth caught in a spider web, light blue, bulging eyes, reflecting the sky, a tattered morsel
of the universe replaying a movie on a filmy TV screen
The wooden sword pierces paper and tongues, slices the periods off the end of sentences,
and makes the tablecloth bleed red doilies
that blossom into roses, a sweet fragrance of longing and nostalgia for the benevolent status
of petals carpeting the golden courtyard by milk-white feet, like a dove caught in mid flight,
the moon in the bottom of his palm tattooed with the ink from crushed bones and green leaves
that decorate golden hair, derive sustenance, their sun, give birth to feeble sprouts
that cannot lift their heads.
Saturn tilted on its axis and offered its ring as it proposed to the sun, and the wooden sword
split the galaxy down the middle, left it lying like a potato bug on its back, its feet peddling in the air,
its antennae twitching with incoherence, searching for a sound that does not reach the ears,
and a foothold no longer there, like a dying moth taking flight.