Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks August 2015 (Collaboration) | Page 37

I was a part of the scenery that day,
but I was not a sheep of any description, even black.
I was a butterfly: freshly emerged from an airline cocoon,
flitting, alighting, taking flight - on wings of autonomy;
wearing my youth like I wore my colours - without ceremony;
seeking an essence that we’d left behind
when we dived into industry. Before it digested us.
These were the cogs in the machine, the wheels that kept the city turning,
this human colony of ants. They swarmed,
excreted by trains in an endless gush, a diarrhoea
of worker ants and shopping queens, inhaling the stench of conformity;
heads bent in determined chase of an irony
of labour-saving gadgets they worked so hard to afford;
of the ultimate purchase - which lost its promise once procured.
The Holy Grail was super-sized, or merchandise or bargain bin,
but it failed to fill the void within their chest cavity.
I had seen light in the eyes of leprosy, and poverty
clad in a sunset of colour and smiles, but no flowers bloomed here.
This butterfly has settled now. Life has stitched a hem around my wings
but inside I’m still travelling in time: reading history, writing this poem,
sewing period clothes to find a home for my nostalgia.
Once I cooked over fires, drank from streams, lived without electricity,
washing laundry in a dustbin lid till I found a bucket.
Nowadays I’d buy one but it didn’t cross my mind then
and I laugh at my simplicity. Then I realise I have lost the keys to Eden.
I have become an ant. I have filled in forms and stood in lines
and I have been afraid to stand out.
My view has panned out, and I’ve realised the crowd is comprised
of individuals; each cog in the machine is another me:
the centre of a universe on the edge of a black hole, facing
life - without parole; trying to keep my balance and live with soul.
We choose our own syntax but in the end we all share a sentence.
And this sentence, no matter how I phrase it,
leads inevitably towards a full stop.
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