Signs

There are signs continuously indicating a shift in time.
A tummy swells well in advance of an impending arrival.
Soil is noticeably displaced prior to a shoot bursting through.
Eyes glisten and widen upon recognizing their soul mate’s heart.

Tears marking the moment when someone well-loved forever departs. 
Clouds darken and brows furrow as ferocious storms begin to brew.
Birds nest anew as smoke clears following contests for survival.
The burial mound’s swell marking the last milepost you’ll ever find.   

A Drip

Precariously perched upon the thinnest of precipices
Oblivious to its origin or destined destination
Unknowingly anticipated by all craving life below.
A spotlessly, translucent, microbial sphere conceived in air.
Its molecular meeting convened on a passing dust speck’s spine.
Randomly snagged by the tip of a sun seeker’s chlorophyll tongue.
Fiercely engaging in a playful tug-o-war with gravity.
The tension is soon sliced by a solar sword ripping through midday,
catapulting the oracle towards a predestined demise
Its end sustaining or resurrecting those upon whom it bursts.

Transition from Translation

Despite disparate dialects,
we’re unabashedly united,
in parroting to one another,
                flippant,
                   antialtruistic,
                       anthropomorphic assignations
uncharacteristically categorizing
   flora and fauna,
      mammals and microbes,
                mobile and immobile,
                      spined and spineless,
                           sighted and sightless,
                                 cognizant and incognizant
as incidental, fragmentary, pale imitations of us…

in lieu of comprehending the incomprehensible,
                by explicating the exceptional,
                contextualizing with lent lenses.

Rendering impossible the resurrection of Babel
                to befit all drawing breath
in a universe none have created or control,
                into a lingua franca all can extol. 

Bipedal

Widening the gap between earth and eye.
The higher one grows, the more one feels prized.

Those roaming beneath might feel fear or awe,
but most likely never ponder or pause.

They have not a single limb at leisure.
To us, such lives seem devoid of pleasure.

They in turn smile – their burdens aren’t within.
To them a life such as ours must be grim.

Relaxation – an ecocritical interpretation

Pulling blinds = neutralizing disruptive reality.

Jamming earphones down canals = suppressing unsolicited birdsongs.

Gorging on slaughtered bovine captives = eliminating another carbon contributor.

Washing down overcooked sinew with chemically cleansed wastewater = bleaching a crime scene.

Licking strawberries dripping with pesticides = supporting future medical research.

Trolling the internet = accelerating intellectual extinction.

Popping a sleeping pill = self-reflection.

Skin

The opaque cloak covering my soul,

not even a lover can slip beneath for a peek.

The slightest brush elicits a sense of the fire within, on even the coldest of days.

Upon reaching loan maturation, it dissipates to the eternity from which it came,

leaving nothing

but memories in its wake. 

Petals

Insect seducers,
                luring with
                                dangling
                                                golden sweets.
Ensuring their own progeny far and wide
through the tiny feet of petite flying beasts. Selflessly propagating beyond their bounds,
                plucked by the lovesick,
                their number alone
                grants confidence to pursue and not postpone.

Micro Series – Trees

It drinks our poisonous breath and in turn gives us life.
We take shelter beneath it from rain, wind and heat,
yet strike it dead for leaf pollution, view obstruction  
or to burn inside the skeletons of their forebearers in which we dwell.

Even in death it gives us life – cooking our food, warming our bodies.
Never once does it scoff or cry in this world or the next. 
It merely whispers gentle rustlings into our dammed canals
in the vain hope of having a heart to heart with a neighbor.

Ashen Resurrection – Disputing the Instant Fix of the Phoenix

Given the general destruction which has been hovering over the globe like a squall these last few months, there has been a lot of metaphor tossing going on.  One of the most popular being the, “we’ll rise from the ashes like a phoenix” concept.  It’s a romantic notion, but not a particularly realistic one in my view.

For example, given the reason riots full of fire, let’s look to nature.  When you have a forest fire, no matter the origin of the spark – it’s true, the trees do eventually come back.  But you’re talking about regenerating colossal giants from minuscule seeds.  It doesn’t pop up all of a sudden fully grown in an instant just because (like the Phoenix) you wish it into being.  First of all, the seed itself has to exist.  All the hope in the world doesn’t translate to a tangible reality.  There is cause and effect.  A seed has to be ejected from its source of origin in order to have any hope of generation.  If that weren’t the case, you wouldn’t be reading this right now.  The seed then has to take root – the soil resting beneath the ash must be viable and atmospheric conditions adequate enough to promote settling in.  If one isn’t open to “newness” in any form, it will feel unwelcome to flourish and either wander off elsewhere or simply cease to exist all together.

If you’re lucky enough that it takes root and begins to grow, don’t plan on seeing it in its full glory in your lifetime or your children’s.  First of all, it may be the same species, but it’s not the same tree.  Like a snowflake or fingerprint, it will never be exactly the same.  Just as peace after war is full of hope, but the promises of kindness doled out by the same environment that not so long ago tried to exterminate you is like picking through a box of chocolates which may or may not be laced.  You go about it one tiny bite at a time because you have fond memories of the satisfaction it used to bring to your life.  But now you smell and chew thoroughly before swallowing.

Secondly, it has a lot of competition to survive.  Either it’s all alone and vulnerable to even the slightest of changes – or a ton of others have moved into the same neighborhood and they’re all fighting to get the best food and view.  Thirdly, even if you try to speed it up by watering it, fertilizing it etc. it will still take decades if not centuries to reach the nirvana of the heavens at which point it is seemingly invincible against everything – except an ax, match, lightning bolt or disease.  Life is a precarious, fragile existence even in its most colossal forms.  To think, all those years spent slowly and methodically developing its presence in this world and it takes practically seconds in most cases to completely obliterate its existence, with or without intent or reason.

Apocalyptic Paradox

I was re-watching an old Soviet post-apocalyptic drama the other day while stuck at home.  Well, it seemed to fit the mood of the moment.  It’s called “A Visitor to a Museum” or for those of you who can read Cyrillic (in which case you’ve undoubtedly already seen the film a thousand times) “Посетитель музея.”

It has the usual hallmarks of post-apocalyptic imagery.  Physical deformities of those directly impacted by the catastrophe, piles of garbage everywhere, darkness, rampant hopelessness – aside from a few who either persevere despite everything, or persist in searching for the proverbial needle in the garbage heap upon which to hang their last pleas for a return to the good old days, when a better tomorrow seems implausible.  Of course, being a Russian film, the ending doesn’t go so well for our hero.

Nevertheless, it got me to thinking about our typical conceptions of what an apocalypse looks like.  No matter what corner of the Earth you inhabit the imagery is pretty uniform.  Everything is dark, dirty, unorganized, angry – in general disrepair coupled with despair.  So, it is interesting how as we are facing one of the greatest tragedies in recent memory due to the pandemic, the scenery around us has definitely changed – but not as one would expect as one senses a descent into what very may well be (yet, hopefully not) the beginning of an apocalypse.

Society has seen a declination of populations out and about around the world – either from quarantines or in the worst- case scenarios, death itself.  In its wake, the sun still shines brightly.  The darkness is within.  It is the shower of tears both without and within those who have experienced loss of a loved one.  It is the fear of what may be for others who are fighting to avoid an invincible, invisible foe – namely the virus, or perhaps their own despair at enduring isolation, something most are unaccustomed to.

Meanwhile, swans and dolphins have returned to the suddenly clear waters of Venice.  Deer are casually roaming the streets of Japan without fear of their former tormentors – namely, us.  And while the darkness rages within the worlds we have constructed as well as within our very beings, the world outside our closed windows has returned to its natural origins as in the very beginning of time.  I’m an atheist, so for those who hang out in my camp the end is the end and if it comes to that, we’re ok with it.  We have no idea if we will simply turn to dust or morph into some sort of ethereal light once we cross the threshold, but just like Malevich’s famous Black Square – anything is possible and that in itself helps us sleep soundly at night.  For those who are religious, I can imagine in some respects a sense of a return to the Garden of Eden comes to mind when reading of nature returning to spaces from which we expelled them , wittingly or otherwise– except this time it is more likely than not to flourish without us.