Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Unfinished poem

Perhaps the most recent one I have written:

First Become a Tree, then will come the fruit.

1
Once armfulls of brambles
spilled from my chest.
My rootless feet blew
and scraped across hardened ground.
A face full of rips and peels.
Just a bucket of dry brambles for the fire.

2
With hebel, wind and vanity
shouting in my ears ...

3
Until the golden silence,
The day of my vision.

A black sky with not a pinprick through the stormclouds
Crows surrounded the fruit tree.

One flew from a nest in my chest.
A giant crow, black as space.
With talons extended he latched into the tree
and ripped its flesh.

Then they all exploded into a violent wind.

When they settled the tree was bare of bark and fruit.

The tree was bleeding.

4
Christ have mercy,
I must flee before the crow returns to my bramble patch.

It was then that I saw hope
bruised fruit littered the ground.

I reached into my chest and tightened around the wirey thorns,
fire ran through my bloody hands
And I pulled the entire nest and cast it down.