Do trees cry when you chop them?
Do trees cry when you cut them down?
Do they feel the pain when the axe falls?
Do they bleed when you put a blade through their bark?
I wonder what happens to their roots?
I wonder how they feel when uprooted?
Do they weep when they are gutted?
Are their screams and cries for help lost in the burning pain
when fires light up their unheard screams
Like an unseen bloodstain
by YASSY
© All rights reserved 2024
I who have known pain: You say, not this pain —
Your pain runs wider and deeper than mine.
Your pain thoroughly over-canyons mine
out-oceans mine, thrusting a fiery head
up from the mountaining deeps, your pain heaps
a new island stone by stone, bare and black,
licked by flame — your pain and mine are not the same —
to which I offer a palm and say: look.
That open sky swallows our smaller lives,
spits them out in some mightier place — or shits
them, it’s good to be humble. Look: a bird
leaf-beaked alights upon that lonely shore.
Not my bird or your bird, but its own bird,
other-bird, leading the way to fresh cliffs.
A bird brings seeds, drops seeds, shits seeds, a bird
drawn there to the heaped ruin you call yourself.
You cannot know this bird, you have always known
this bird, this holy spirit, white as the salt
in your tears. This bird nests in your pain, builds
paradise. Hope floats its coconut in,
unbidden, under that embracing sky.
by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2024
We return to the beginning, stripped
of our knowledge and rank, bound in white:
a shroud, a swaddling blanket, a bride’s veil,
a drawer stuffed full of rags and bandages.
Trussed up in white and left naked by fear.
The brutal say I don’t learn anything —
that’s why I no longer seek the brutal
as teachers, their blood my blood, their hiss
and spit so familial. Let gentleness
teach me these most difficult lessons
that I must begin again, without rank
or honor to learn a gentle way.
Or perhaps it is the easiest
of tasks: drop your knowledge, begin again
a blank page awaiting a love song —
by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2024
And that’s it
Time now to fold up the earth
And put it away
Those marvellous things you’ve seen
And heard today
machines and exo-build
Infra-plus H
Have gone
If only we could breathe under water
Tremendous mysteries
Of thousands and tens of thousands
And multimillion tears
Folded
All the creatures and the people
Those Long dead
and others
Are of no matter
Believe me
And tomorrow
Forget about the world
folded in on itself
We are concerned only with ourselves
The dying
by TOPOLINOPOET
© All rights reserved 2023
Meeting where “Your insight
is imperative,”
but participation
is optional.
“Let’s catch up
soon,” shared by
people passing
in echoing hallways.
“Love, love, love what
you did there,”
praising mediocre
work.
“Your email must have
found its way
to the abyss of
my inbox,” a common tale.
“No offense but…”
often prefaces
unsolicited
perspectives.
“Take your time,
there’s absolutely
no hurry,”
with deadlines whispering.
“Just jesting,”
comes after,
softening
sharp words.
“I’ll ponder over it,”
a placeholder,
while decisions
drift.
“Wow, you’ve really
surpassed yourself
this time,”
for varying efforts.
“Couldn’t have achieved
it without your
unique contribution,”
when roles blur.
by KEVIN L. MCDANIEL
© All rights reserved 2024
