Tag: poetry

The rain drowned their songs
and filled their boots with water,
cold as a dead man’s bath.
Braced on horseback they rounded
a hill webbed in weeds,
and suddenly the land unfolded before them-
a tower, standing solid and stout,
like an iron coffin;
a village, sunken in mud,
with long abandoned fields rolling across
the flattened land,
like brown patchwork on a falling apart quilt.
And beyond the empty pastures,
past the cold walls that threatened to scrape the sky-
was blackened land,
torn up by spiny weeds and husks of trees.
The sky was neither cloudy nor clear;
but a shimmering mist swelled the rain.
Some remembered this land,
and their breath hitched in their throats
as they pulled back the reins.
A gust of wind,
the flapping of cloaks,
raindrops clinging to eyelashes-
this was not the land they once knew.
This land was dying,
its fields spotted in flood water
and farms bare of cattle and mountain sheep,
with thatched roofs caving in,
and bone trees snaring the land-
they could almost see the ghosts
that, pale as fish,
dragged their feet across the earth,
acting through their endless day.
“How could this happen?”
they asked.
There was no answer, of course.
They dug their heels into their steeds,
and then reared onward,
as the wind bit their necks.

I extracted this piece from my current work in progress, and tweaked it into a poem. It might seem kind of lazy, but I’ve been overwhelmingly busy lately, and I did have some fun adapting it.

Your words are foul,
both birdlike and base,
and the fury that swarms me
when you speak
is a frightening thing.
Your voice digs into my skin,
fierce as a crow’s squawk
and sharper than its talons,
and though you have done me no wrong
but to poison the air with your tongue,
it is animus that ignites me.
I have no right to hate,
I have no right to wish your lips still
or dream of my ears falling off
so that I should never
be filled with your foul words again.
My anger astounds me,
my animus alarms me.
Raven shrieks
and yowls of beasts
would be harmonious in place
of your toxic breath.
If only you’d quiet,
if only you’d listen,
if only you’d realize your rancid words.
Then perhaps I would be relieved of
animus.

This poem ended up going a bit differently than I originally planned. Its structure’s a bit iffy, so I might come back to it later to iron out some kinks. The narrator of this poem is a pretty messed-up original character of mine, in case you were wondering.