The Changing Seasons

Simple observation is something that has always fasinated me.
The idea of watching something just for the sake of watching it. Not playing a part in too and frow of events simply because you want to see how things turn out on their own.

I've often wondered what it would be like to spend a lifetime, or longer, just playing the part of the observer. Divorced from all base emotions and needs. To be comfortable and fulfilled with merely watching the world go by.

Of course I don't have to tell you there are a number of problems with this idea (Basic human needs/boredom/attention span problems that could only be solved by the ability to convert everything into a montage...also people have a habit of not living forever) but the idea still interests me enough that it served as the seed for the following piece (then I sort of messed with it).

Anyway, brace yourselves for more poetry type writing and let me know what you think in the comments.

Broken Circle.

A heady wind blows uphill then wanders down
leaving promises of warmer weather.
The sun slips bonds and wallows childlike in the snow.
Slowly waking, I feel winter’s sullen hold decay.

Bare branches spread as hands placed upon the sky,
while roots tremble and crack the glass below.
Reborn, I stand with pride on fertile soil,
now ready to cast my seed upon the earth again.

Rains come, a scattering of grey string, held
Taut across the sky; virgin buds suckle and grow.
Without a voice I whisper to my children,
Curled up upon the shore of sleep. Soon. Soon.

I dance in the wind and the sun returns, ashamed.
Young growth begins to bask in its guilty glow.
Leaves unfasten and small seeds uncoil;
I listen to the chatter of my children flow.

Spring turns summer and warmth becomes heat,
The glutted sun rests heavy upon my crown of green.
Paralysed in paradise, without thought
Or care; I could stay this way forever.

It does not stay, it does not last, my children
Crackle and dry, fading as quickly as they came.
My crown becomes a husk, a memorial
To the dead and dying and I shake with my sorrow.

I shake as if a beast that sheds its skin,
Then stand shamefaced and bare and alone.
My children lay littered at my feet. Dry and dead;
Given voice by cold wind I feel my branches groan.

The wind picks up; the storms roll in, dancing madly
They give forth a neon glow that cuts the sky.
A bolt of static, of serrated charge,
Seeks me out and breaks me then casts me upon ground.

I smoke and splutter, a furnace makes my heart;
I high pitched pyre of searing sparks and bubble talk.
I writhe and turn, delirious and aloof.
My sap mixes with the ash, turned vapour in the sky.

The rains roll back in, flames hiss with hate. Too late.
I lie broken and burnt; I lie disembowelled.
No hope of healing or growth. I am done.
The slow fall of snow burries me. Folds me over. I sleep.

I barely wake in time for the return of spring,
Anchored only by the bits not blackened and burnt.
Melting snow exhumes me, both the living and the dead,
A skeleton that will not grow; a being all blunt and tamed.

Time passes. I spend most of it in sleep.
New growth springs up all around. But none are mine.
New noises fill new trees. A distant roar.
In the distance older growth is trampled down.

They come with hard eyes and cold iron that cuts,
Then calmly take to me and those all around.
Laid low by servile fear I shake and I
Shudder at the sudden force, the biting axe.

Rough hands break me down into little pieces
They say I’ll find some use. Be something new.
A chair. A table. Something useful.
Something polished. But I know that it won’t be me.


So there we go. Like the last piece I put up this was part of a recent poetry assignment and apart from being inspired by the idea of the eternal observer that I touched on above it was also written in response to another poem - the Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud (which he wrote when he was 16!) which can be found here (http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html) - in that it follows the journey of an inanimate object that is described as being both conscious and unconscious of itself and its surroundings at the same time.

So have a read of Rimbaud if you are so inclined, but, keep in mind that it was originally written in French and so the translation linked above is rather different (and in my opinion not as good) from the one that I first read (if you are capable of doing so maybe read it in its original form?).

Anyway that’s enough from me for the moment. Think I’m getting into a good place with writing at the moment (The way The Executioner turned out has got me thinking about whole new avenues of writing) so the next post should not be too far away (Also, no, I haven't forgotten about my promise of pirates - so that will turn up at some point too).

Until then,

M