tree-ward
part 1
they walk into a forest where lights dance on trunks and the leaves are like green glass
they walk past mud-puddling swallowtails (one draught of clear water) past Knysna Louries
and the white glints of blue buck in retreat yes the forest dwellers a beloved and
she walk past the unbroken bend of rainbow bark
into a glade
half-turning she looks back
out of the dark burst
birds butterflies and
elephants trample head-on
the vegetation grows into a dense fable
rabid offshoots that snarl and
they flee
please oh please run faster
coolness a shoulder tap
don’t look don’t
it licks her nape
look
a shadow self looks back
the shadow is a feral lion-person the feral lion-person is a shadow
with ink-stained teeth
with self-sharpening teeth
full-toothed it lengthens and lengthens
a beloved grabs her hand
swerves right
bodies close to ground they crawl out of woodland
begin their climb uphill winded jabs
in open space
they are easy targets
but the lion-person-shade gobbles left coppice
shrill shreds
out of the bare picnickers of Manet
(Le Déjeuner sur l´herbe)
slits of
emptiness bleed through pure canvas
a sun rise behind the paint
and like all artists she is singular
an oracle she shuts her eyes to see
into bushy mass
to mark the felling space
but the trees are already a congregation
a skeleton-man gives a sermon
booming words of bone
embraced by the muscles of his orchard
his words are his hands the firm hold of
a flying fox with long finger-bones
his hands are strong
his hands are primitive hammers
wild swings that pulp the treetops
(blood oranges or pong-pong seeds bespatter) a hit
in Aokigahara the cult that versifies corpses
pallid poetry
Sylvia Plath
People or stars/ Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. /
@ShokiMokgapa
once more she writes vastness for herself a place of
velocity she is a tree-lizard
light of foot she travels between planets
to swallow alien insects
head tilted towards the sun
she sits in the belt of
trees like to gossip
still talk:
hierarchy saplings ruminants fire-risk
trees speak underground ‒
she is inside a Rockwell painting The Gossips (study)
in the second-last row a girl in a wheelchair animates
a child’s tale (Kyk Klara Loop) Klara is a delicate plant
kindling her tongue is a caressing wind
feverish breath
loath to live in fire
she morphs into a ghost moth
silver windows on nut-brown wings
moon-eyed
she looks everywhere at the same time
a little boy cries eyes filled with bruises
she climbs on top of his hands to soothe
the roughness is like a keurboom tree
riddled with eggs red and pink clusters
the boy buds abruptly
an oleander
with blooming fists
once more she wants to depart
and her lips form a cocoon
changeable she reflects
shot silk around her mobile head
spinning she turns into
a bright yellow-winged swallowtail
with black holes ‒ a radiant heaviness
and she rises with the sun
and she swoops with the moon
a butterfly nebula
she looks down
and the forest is really a labyrinth
and a labyrinth is a map
dot about
punctuation on the ground
paint-powder
the dusty patterns of colour
contracting she points to
the heart of the labyrinth
her wings pixelate
a human body she is a woman
and the forest is a fairy-tale with flightless birds
peckish
they strike
at dwindling crumbs
but she listens to untold droplets
follows the steep sound of
a waterfall
and drinks
and drinks anew
there she drinks in
infinite self
the labyrinth is but a speck and outside she looks
at the valley of close-knit hills and sneezes
from copious sun and grass and pathways
(no other lone rambler around) affable alike
three women lead and she scampers to be
just another servant and her cells remember
the recital
a call-bell
the sound of dogma
she stumbles over a dove
wounded
or ill
the feathers feel stiff
and all of a sudden she doubts
her first sense of
life in the little breast
a stirring
a slight shift
the plumage moves her hands exhales
newly hatched spiders
dropping the dove she slaps at legs
crawling underneath her skin
screaming she looks up for a long while now
alone
she runs away
in search of scree
to scrub off skin
to bleed spiders on crags
she forces her way through
bushman poison thorn bush khaki bush
sinks a bog in descend
she bruises onwards
with layers of dirt
the whole time looking for flow
a stream a river;
it gulps down air
a fast-moving youngster
its tail is that of an iguana
a white
blast
on brown water
there is a tree in the middle every branch
a waterfall
a rapid
water in riot
stepping in her legs give way
she submits
white
she glides out of silt
out of riparian land
a water snake
in a farm dam with a windmill
she sails sky-high looks about
shrubs on all sides
she sprouts new legs
on an earth road she treads mud and basks to a future grey in the desolate flats that persist
with each new departure she goes by road on the way sets pace she starts to climb to the top
of a dead mine and looks at
grass perhaps
green gravel on the quarry
beer-bottles dashed to pieces
she throws shards
because she likes how they spur on light
as if her hands are a place of take-off for shooting stars
her fingertips spell out sparks
transport to the other side
moreover the archway for an underground station
where the air breathes mould
and a woman sings
her voice is a flute the notes conduct and the woman is sound
reflection the woman leads and she is ritardando
in darkest shafts
through mountain’s masonry echo
she follows
a headwind blows through the main tunnel looks out at a farmstead and hills of limestone
whirling
film
of
whitewash
air
the notes are a current
wafting into the farmhouse
humming the woman indoors
to stillness
she is pregnant
silence
(she doesn’t know her core song)
irresoluto she resounds
to look within
the rooms are a TARDIS indoors a little girl laughs
where are you?
she runs from room to room
opening doors
some close of their own accord
she roams from room to room countless
times on the move too short-
winded
where are you?
a little girl whispers
listen and look
at tail-end is a kitchen:
dusk
the door bangs shut
something jumps on her back claws at her nape
screaming she tries to tear it off
but it grabs towards her face
she takes hold of it and flings
scratched eyes
she can’t see past the pitch-
darkness of sticky blood;
half-light
the door bangs shut
something jumps on her back claws at her nape
screaming she tries to tear it off
but it grabs towards her face
she takes hold of it she flings
scratched eyes
she can’t see past the spurts of
metallic red;
dawn
the door bangs shut
something jumps on her back claws at her nape
screaming she tries to tear it off
but it kneads forward to purr
nonsensicality non-words
speaketh truth
like a primeval grasp
like the space between lines
and a cat lives there in whiteness
her eyes are childlike
she hears
flute notes and the little girl laughs
the woman opens the door
good
now you may look outside
again she walks through the tunnel
there is a Jacob’s ladder between two pillars
she looks up
a beloved looks down
his smile ignites
a fiery particle
an almost
recognition
spark-off from fire
it flickers
out
she starts to climb
the ladder swings to and fro
full weight in armpits
it burns
she lets go
again she looks up
this time following the axis of heart
crosswise hands and feet
transcend her fingers reach
and touch edges
there is rough stone underneath her palms
there is a stone floor below her elbows
she pulls herself up and through
breathless
she inhales stone
a clammy coldness against her belly
she pushes herself to her back and looks up
and up and up
in a tower she turns sideways further on an oak door
fit for gods or angelic humans or star beings
trembles with the sound of a clarion
the trumpeter of war
at once an inset door beckons
she walks into chatter laughter the din of a festive hall
the lone woman in a suddenly aware horde and the floor is littered
with hop cones she notices a beloved on a bar-stool between
boon companions and even the bottles are watchful distortions
she wants to flee to light on sun to feel
golden pink warmth on her eyelids she wants to
be in the breeze
but all the doors look back at the underground station
the flute-woman and little girl await her
they point to the haven of pillars
a stone bay
and the little girl whispers
I am pure source white-
water deepening
flow the rose glitter
I mouth towards dawn
the little girl giggles
rainbow notes
dance in her eyes out of her ears into her body and
outside the polar lights dance
and the flute-woman sings
I am the tree
the branches that find higher community
I am the stream
the roots that connect with earth star and centre
the flute-woman is a whiff of rain
her skin is a green lake
the flute-woman reaches her arms are sprigs
her heels are haulms the evergreen stem
she swallows the deep
and becomes the little girl the flute-woman each and
every branch a waterfall her fingers spill bark she sits in her own
shade finds stream and begins to climb higher and higher
at times she rests in a forked branch higher and higher
where swallows fly and where all forked branches are but an entrance
to water masonry soil grass trees life as far as she is willing to
look the branch-worlds stretch out and she climbs even higher
tree-ward
part 2
she looks up
the right-hand branch is forked
the leaves are translucent
an entrance
to water-berries copper-leaf trees umbrella trees to glints on trunks and leaves like
green glass Knysna Louries and the forest glitters with the white tails of blue buck
with brilliant dust in a pencil of rays with the wings of swallowtails golden powder
around black holes a radiant heaviness
like the sound of a waterfall continuous hills of flow towards
a tree that grows in the middle of a river
and the river branch off
the water is translucent
an entrance
to a beaver home in possible the same river
three frolicsome bears dive in at their side a billow over the wall
at the right side it lifts the swimmers the merry ones rise
in a waterspout higher and higher where swallows swarm
higher and higher to the crown
and the swimmers reach for bush for stone for an entrance to clouds a water slide
and they are the seafarers they sail up and
down
down
down
down
eagerly
down
down
down
down
faster
down
down
in high spirits they arise and yet again the bears dive
that is where I want to be
in the water she looks at the playful bears at her side is a middle-aged man
gray hair on his Buddha-belly bald head glistens with drops of sunlight and he is
the beloved
you are just as aware of me as I am of you
sometimes we swim with the bears
a bear leaps
an ecstatic start
the wave elevates
splutters of water in her mouth
in her throat
and lungs
I am going to drown
but her belly laughs
and her beloved holds out a hand a question a reassurance
not yet
let me
and I begin to swallow the spray to swallow my experiences
a waterspout higher and higher and the swallows are my friends
higher and higher at crown I reach
for bush for stone for an entrance to clouds a water slide
and I am a seafarer
I look forward to my return ride
everything is alive belly heart mind I am
the-beloved-forest-water-swallows-bears-and-I-rejoice
when is the next time
https://ko-fi.com/s/1b2a1013f5
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