Trapped

perched above the collision,
I watched violence spill 
through fields of thistle. 
the scream of broken blades 
scattered across the floor,
witnessed by a nostalgia for change,
one season never fulfilled.
against effort to contain light,
grafting it to the shadow,
it never stills. nothing ceases. or settles. 
it shifts across landscapes
and dissolves back into the horizon.
i am a virus of this beast. 
at home in a bed of nails. 
with a splinter beneath the skin.
this loss of words and lack of inspiration 
is exhaustion weeping from spent hands. 
in pillows of smoke, your skin glowing red,
the fractured lens observes 
your embryonic dance -
a formless gesture in a bed of poison ivy. 
just another bacterium
developing resistance 
to the cure. 

i know exactly what you are capable of,
and i am terrified of what we are creating.
your seed beneath the tongue,
a cube of sugar blooming in the desert.
rotting in the tributaries.
evolved to remain.
stripping the landscape.
your true nature unmasked to bitter air.
your capacity to adapt inside hostile environments - it’s taking over.
im too exposed.
i can’t hide.

Poem about what it feels like to be alive during these times of human-created climate and ecological collapse. Observing and experiencing the process but unable to stop it.