EARS WIDE OPEN // anastasis tree

Earlier this year, we wrote a poem called anastasis tree. It’s one of our personal favourites and it seems this was also the case for many of you, our dear readers. Oh, and guess what? We were lucky enough to have the inimitable Miljenko Williams do a reading of it for us. We think you’ll agree that he’s done an absolutely wonderful job. Please do sit back, relax, and enjoy! (Also, may we recommend that you cast a curious ear over another of his readings here? It’s one of his own poetic efforts. Seriously, check it out. It’s SO good!)

 

anastasis tree

thick scabbed bark like a panoply
but tenderer than a wing-stroke
stealthy touches, airy kisses,
cracking, cracking

i’m but a breath, thinly stretched
by potter o’er clay and bone
i’m a tumbleweed in tumbleland
a noose dropped at the hanging tree

gnawing trails through rotten caudex
weaving cocoons inside the heartwood
quivering fibrils, feeble pulse
waiting, waiting

you are closer than the wisp of lips
you are deeper than oceans mere
you are greater than fears all brung
an empty space at the hanging tree

gentle stirring feels like convulsions
nobody asks you when you’re ready
voiceless screams, waterless tears
waking, waking

we all submit that need to know
we know love that seek out truth
we love true another’s name
our troubles left at the hanging tree

you want me for you
i want you for me
so let it be
a butterfly sways
on a hangman’s noose
at the dead tree

 

Text by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
Audio by MILJENKO WILLIAMS
Image by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2016

37 thoughts on “EARS WIDE OPEN // anastasis tree”

  2. Am totally bowled over by all the kindness expressed here. I haven’t done this very much, but enjoy it more each time I do it again. And reading someone else’s poem, poems as good as T&T’s in particular, allows me to caress and care for and love the words as gentle cousins – each with a life of their own. Yet even as they exist in solitude and experiential baggage, they are living in the same space as good family permits. So that’s how I feel about all the singular and collective comments yous have left. You have made my Sunday morning. Many thanks,

    Liked by 2 people

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  3. First and foremost of all thank you for liking my post; As of right now, I have gotten nothing but 4 views, and I have gotten zero search terms, and I am supposed to be getting search terms! Having very little views and not having any search terms means that my blog may be in trouble! I have worked so very hard on doing this multi-part story, “A Girl Named Cinderella”, and I am hoping I would get more than 40 views. If you would, I would very much like to have you to please tell your family and friends about my blog, KALEIDOSCOPE; That way, it would help make my blog grow! Thank you so very much!-JW

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  7. certainly not pg
    Love at the end of a rope
    ah what it means to be unconnected
    To life,an insatiable appetite
    Love on the menu
    Certainty not the greasy spoon
    Horse drives
    With a chasers
    And cigarette afterwards
    The Sheldon Perspective

    Liked by 2 people

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