Under The Serpent Sun

passing by Deaf Man's Drift,
bowled delights of heaven shine down
illuminating soft treasures
and links within the shoreline.

the cloud empties without reason,
dumping raindrops the size of yesterday
on everything it meets. the earth swallows,
water rushes up to greet me.

now, today is just like yesterday,
a drenched insomniac's dream
that I am walking through, like a devil
trying to escape a reputation.

night climbs up to the edge of town
puts its elbows down, watching.
I remember this now, from a nightmare
I had when I was sixteen feet tall-

the hidden springs inside the machine,
squeak squeak squeaking..
the rooftop caving in, again & again..
a cavalry of Cavemen on horseback

dragging the bodies of Europeans
behind them in a slow death trot..
mother calling me away from the cliff edge
as I dangle one foot, then the other.

the sweetness of this is the hunger
that follows the serpent sun,
a journey through the gut that explodes
on the other side like laughter.

these walls are dangerously thin,
they do not keep the strong from pushing
through, nor the weak from listening in
on the laughter that mocks them

from the other side. too many
nights of misery and sudden-death
experiments shaped like fairy wings-
the trickery is in their eyes

and the way their spirit flies, you see.
together, the strong and the weak
meet in this awkward place of reason
and they both say to me, "We suffer."

"Love, love, love is the answer
on the islands of paradise that float
out in the sea," I tell them.
because we know it, we've felt it all along.

we've listened to the sea song,
placed our hearts down near the water
and twisted weeds.. the tease of a dream
awakened by a shrill alarm of arrows

that penetrate our mountains
and our mole hills, our sheltered streams
of purity, the frightening frontier
of love, happiness and broken windows.

wait for it, my friends. there is a tide
that will bring it back to you,
a tide that resembles a wind storm
full of flowers and seeds of change.

nothing is lost, nothing is gained.
do not fear the names of the unknown,
nor the falling branches, nor the dark
earth inside our eyes, for it belongs to us

and we belong to it.



poem by Mick Tomlinson