City Cicadas.
An inflated sun with blurry edges sets
at dusk, hidden
by dust and a jungle of high rises.
Mobs of agitated city cicadas rumble
in concrete-suffocated trees.
Crowds of strangers shuffle,
pace,
cycle
in the remnants of the day’s heat
that radiates from pavement after pavement,
road after road.
Navigating,
being lost and found,
hidden and sought;
all pretending they have someplace to be
because to stop the pacing would be
to cause the inconceivable;
a collapse in all of the things that we hold dear.
All of our gods,
gone.
An abandoned civilization of pacing people,
suddenly directionless.
Maybe then will we look around and wonder why
we poison ourselves and say it’s the price
to pay for an antidote
or kill
for the honour of life.
Why we’ve worn our souls transparent for the minimum wage of greed.
A day will come,
be it by will or by force,
when the gods will die,
the veil of dust cleared.
and we can hide behind them no longer.
A day will come
when we nurture the vines that grow around the rubble
and see the latter not as ruins
but a rich, yet misguided history
to forgive
and be forgiven
but never forgotten, lest it repeat itself.
A day when we have made amends with the sea,
reconciled with the sky,
and become one with the earth
once more.
Long-abandoned souls
in a concrete city of cicadas and strangers
learning to love again.
(Archive from 04/04/24)