Alex Mita
Driving
I FOLLOWED
the winding blacktop towards the mountain. The sun had swollen now into an
orange red glaring eye that could warm the soul of man, if he were to ever
stand for a moment and watch it set.
It was
supposed to have rained that day, but the clouds gathered around the sun as if
the Almighty had gone crazy with the brush of creation, splashing the canvas of
the sky in a pink and purple-red frenzy and turning the world around me into a
temple of serenity and for a moment, there
was the Earth and it went no further.
The clouds
refused to let it rain; I didn’t blame them, that afternoon must have been
identical to that of the last day of creation.
I had to
slow down to let some sheep cross the road, and watched them jump around for
the sake of jumping, looking at me like I shouldn’t be there.
A single
goat amongst the herd of sheep stood on the white line in the middle of the
road and looked at me defiantly for a moment, mocking me, telling me to go away
and let nature settle down again. It took a few steps towards the car, chewed a
couple of times as it looked at me with intellectual curiosity and then bolted
towards the herd of sheep.
I moved
on. Up ahead the road drowned in a golden- yellow sea of wheat, toned by the
occasional solitary olive tree, my county’s oldest living offspring humped and
twisted and arthritic by the weight of time.
I couldn’t
see a single house around me, apart from the occasional cattle farm built with
car body parts and used tires. This reminded me of the reality of man.
Nowhere
was nowhere no longer. And when I reached the exit 25
miles down the road to
I want to
run through fields of golden yellow
I want to run through fields of golden yellow, hills
that only I would ever know. I want to
lose myself in tranquil seas and barren wastelands; I want to run and never
stop, I want to breathe free air and rid my soul of man and earth and horror. I want my own planet, in my own universe
where I would talk to infants and to birds, and not do and not know evil, I
want to kill death, stop time, make time. I want you there but you are only in the
shadows now. And so too are the fields and seas and death
alone will be my only ally. And as for time it still remains and mocks
me. You stopped time, for just a little
while, until you woke me up one morning, holding the key, and smiling you wound
it up again. Then you were gone and I am left again alone, in silence and in
torment. I am with ghosts abiding time and he will never let me go.
If you were here now, out of the shadows that
surrounds me, into the light that always blinds me.
If you were here then I would rule the world, reverse
the tide, love God and man with all my heart and soul.
If you were nothing less than empty silence, no more
than air I breathe that’s stale and stifling.
If only you were here, so I could sail again in the
ocean of your eyes, I would forever be a child, I would not stir, nor would I
make a sound.
The shell would linger but the mind and soul would
take me thus and I shall be transparent, lost forever, an infant in your womb,
a sparrow in your velvet hands, a man as angry as a mouse, as raging as a
summer breeze, as scolding as the first kiss on your lustful, wanting lips.
Muffled
Mouths Can't Complain
Muffled
mouths can’t complain. Silence seems to surround the world and silent screams
cannot be heard.
Seems
like the world is bearing its teeth, ready to chomp up those who feel they can
make a difference.
Life, as
we know it, is not life, but an abyss of nothingness growing out of man like a
tumour.
We are a
virus, eating at the earth, eating at each other and like a virus we will
perish when there is nothing left to destroy, ideals and thoughts of the past
are now sitting in libraries on the yellowing pages of forgotten, dust-covered
books that no one reads, but scrawny bespectacled old melancholic remnants of
what used to be belief, chivalry, love and kindness.
How do we
overcome ourselves? The truth is we cannot, because greed and hate, vanity and
selfishness are our trademarks they will not change they will not go away, we
do not want them to go away.
The
church, our pillar of strength, our teachers of the faith, of love, forgiveness
and humility, is now filled with fattened clowns covered in gold, driving in
limousines, while a child somewhere in Paphos needs £20,000 each year for a
prosthetic limb his parents can’t afford to give and our pillar of orthodoxy
refuses to lend.
God to
them is just a staircase to the golden goose; they spend each of their waking
hour blasting each other, biting at each other’s throats like vampires to get
to the throne.
They
accuse each other of being gay, and shed crocodile tears on television saying
they have done their best to preserve our religion, and while they sit back in
their leather gold studded thrones, an old man lives in a burnt house and sells
hand-made brooms at any price to survive, but they will not help, they cannot
lend a hand, nor money, nor a kind word.
I would
be called insane, and sick if I were to say take them all and strip them of
their rights, their priesthood and their money. Throw them in life’s armpit to
live as man was meant to live, in pain, in suffering. Let them be taught and
not to teach, let them love and not be worshipped. Let them be hungry let them
be humble, let them be human.
Now the
light is dim
And the
sound doth fade
In the
wilderness lay I, waiting for the rain.
And as the
winds pick up
I’ll think
of thee back as you were,
Back when
the spring came every other day
And the moon called
lovers to the set that wants the sun away.
Now, as
well as then,
There is
no summer that will not give way to a chilling winter’s day.
And
there’s no shadow that will not be killed by light that brings the day.
So here I
lay and here I will remain;
Shrouded
by a cloud of misty acid rain.
But as the
shadows come and voices fade away,
I know
thou wilst not stay, but in my faded vaults of dreams and lust, and dust, your
ghost will linger ‘till another summer’s day.