(A muddy take on the climate catastrophe.)
I AM MUD
I climb high rivers
motionless, crawl
over broken grass,
swim the smoothest peaks
to throw pebbles at your shrieks.
I sail the sun and stars,
but find no trace
I light black holes,
use them to mark souls.
I plead for earth’s amnesty.
Then, preserved in the last
precious peat, I find you
beneath my feet.
Our hunger made bones
of you, no pilgrimage
makes this old world new.
Just fucking mud
clung to you.
Now, my hair is clotted with the muck,
eyes blinded by dust.
Tossed aside into this sheugh,
ears plugged with the clodding mud.
My voice is stifled
oyster oozing
mud slides back down
my muddled throat. My last
senses are smirch, my mucus
muck. My nose, nostrils, lungs
filling up
I am mud.
The cling, the chill, every quarrel.
I am earth, the wet, the shite,
mound of must,
smote, all dust
the dung of everyone, the dead
dreams of everything.
I cling to life. I am mud.
SMALL VICTORIES and the poetry of Adrian Harte 