Title: Whose Wasteland
by Tesni Oteme
I. Worlds in Collision
did you see the yellow
streak pale in array behind the clumping, crying blue,
dying it salmon and rose and ash and leaving cherry spatters.
Across, almost transparent, the watch.
There was a moment. Venus in the morning through the pane.
I forgot to uncover myself, now grass and wealth overlays.
Gilded at the surface, then tearing through the banks to
the bed. You don’t know how the light gets in. Can you prove, show, tell
believe, what makes it green, or gray, or brown?
Bloody tide; bloody tide, piece of spine, dirty feather,
rope. Refuse of being. Where’s the shore now?
Shore, to shore, shorn, sure – aren’t you?
Can you vanish seven thousand miles in uncounted
minutes?
Is it cruel to make
them live again? That I meant to query, is true.
Lilacs are the flower of the city, bred and wet beneath their petals
And in those moments, gone, back, there, the rainfall and crooked
thin limbs, lightning and call, call, call.
That was spring, years gone,
never been replaced.
White choral bells hanging from a slender stem, bleed red
berries and droop, drop, stain the concrete walk.
They live where they worked,
they worked to live and this the work for them. A broken town,
have you seen? Empty boarded store, for lease, dusty glass, broken glass,
broken ground, broken town, broken life. Someone came, bled them, fed them,
left them. What’s happened? Their children were their dreams – or were
their dreams their children? Or in their children? Now they have not even bones.
II. The Solace of Leaving Early
Walk upon a rail track, he behind, ahead, beside – don’t
think so hard, so much, so loud. What’s it good for?
Walk upon the other track, what could you give him?
I’m afraid of a truth. Sun-soaked, wind cut, rocking,
creaking, burning – reading. I am nothing if not transparent –
I know this, light passes through me, slicing the bonds keeping
my skin and organs the same, mine. Is it true? To seal a moment
in the dust.
The difference is obscurity, and the things you could never
know. It’s all right to guess, the trick is to find it in you.
I wonder what happened ever to Meno’s boy?
Across the plain you found everything in the
sun, baking, dying for the crying and bleeding.
Row on row,
rank and file and chaos, white gravel blazing in dusk,
have you seen
their blades, their arms, spinning into the sky
flaring red in rhythm
against the black, have you seen them tell you
they will shred,
rend, rip the sky apart. Just watch.
Dear Brandy, I haven’t seen you in a while, haven’t said to you
what I thought. Do you mind?
I wanted to tell you how much it
rained, how green it all was, how crooked their limbs and whispered
their dirt and flutters.
I wanted to tell you how many I lost,
lost in the canal, and how I burned.
My fingers, my soul,
may never restore, will never have been free from them.
That smell, meaty, salty, heavy, you know it? I dislike it. She had so
much to tell, to give, but I couldn’t. Listen.
It’s not like you thought, in the beginning, after all.
What do you do when you’re run out of time?
III. The Snow Queen
It was far too long, and magnificent, overwhelming.
It transported
me and I saw where I could go.
Back and forth down the slope, the cliff, the way you must do
unless you would plunge, and we did not.
I saw, I saw and felt and
for a moment, heartbeats, the watch
gilded time, layer by sediment,
crack by fissure, silver, black, white
in borrowed light.
have you ever known the age of their bones
those thrust to the black sky whole, to bit by bit be torn and worn
and borne in the length? It’s the same for us.
Methane. He ignited his shoe standing in the clear flame, transparent
he knew better, we laughed
and the earth rippled and sank under our toes.
Suck out the marrow before you give the bone a dog. It’s better for you,
eat it hot, the bone won’t mind.
His tail beats the dust, sends the particle strands of his being spinning into streaks of
yellow through the pane. It all should be clear now.
Have you seen,
seen the city broken down, the way someone crumbled the town…
Never is it enough. Never must be enough. What’s the hour, what is the shade?
There’s a thing that followed, follows from the start – have you caught it?
I didn’t listen – he tried to tell her, I didn’t listen.
Do you remember what it was, silent, from under the door? I never asked, you
could say.
Time is not frightening until you notice her. The watch does
not speak until you ask, and even then.
Be careful. Are you ever afraid what
you could do?
I’ve seen the future, now, tearing down the future, passed. It’s
too late to undo this leap, plunge, drop, you know. And you know it’ll hurt.
Because at the end of the night there are horrors
no tide will wash away. How do you go back when you cannot?
Easy: they make you. Whether you like it or not.
Weather, you like
it or not. When is the time last you felt a hurricane? A wind,
a rage, a hot-cold, a pressure, a tearing, a fear, a shattering,
crashing, flying
the static things go rolling.
The track has wandered far and near, straight lines to the distance,
curves hidden between boles. The ones that are left, anyway.
Haven’t you seen? I have seen.
Turn the page; sing. Sing out. Don’t be louder than the wind and the
engine, they are fighting, brawling over your flesh. I’m serious.
I want to stop but we can’t. Pick your nails, paint
them, sharpen them – I’m not going to repeat Eliot’s game, only
touch it.
IV. Where the Wasteland Ends
This is the only moment you
have. It won’t come back for you.
Lullaby v.
What if I put it out of order? Why shouldn’t I?
A bent knuckle, one two three four and five tips digging in the meat, bleeding
before breaking –
his face. A terrible wish.
It’s never after,
it’s all before – and scream to know there’s more.
It’s not the same, for the dead and the I – some have never gone and some have
never stayed.
Roads and tracks are the horrors of our lives. Nothing is sacred
to them. Nothing is untarred. Every space that isn’t reached wants to be,
they think, and places shrink to dust.
What’s the idea of screaming to whisper?
What’s the secret of being to unbeing?
Is there a choice, or a
chance, or are they all gone, with the bison?
Have you seen
the stack of malice, the pile of nothing less than their skulls?
When there is only
one thing, one track, it is death.
Between you and what you can do, is it fear? Sometimes
I think it should be.
And sometimes I have to laugh.
I’m not going
to end the way he did, breaking down, clawing, gasping, can’t you sense it?
I sat beside the canal and
dreamt, forgetting, in place of all that could.
Thank you for reading, I know it is not a brief skim.
Note: this poem was originally posted to my WordPress blog.