Category: Poetry

…what does it all mean?

…watch out kid, watch yer’ back, keep it on point. Wobble, but come back to your center. Make it count, everything counts. All our days are numbered, and littered with the lettered. Let us play. rewind,  forward, future calling, humming your song, calling, singing, shouting you. Oi, listen, look, read, engage with me, these thoughts, those days and weeks, years flowing on, all remembered in this, the moment of come and go. A jig before the drilling, a swig before the shelling. Oh, the shelling, the mourning and the morning, the nights of sean and of shem, of Alice and Molly. All of our night if we want them, do you want it? have to be headstrong for revelations, for transformation, translation, change.

Do you want change, or status quo? young or old, conservative or liberal, break out. Bust loose. Get out from under the boot and toot your toot. Time is running out, the sand falls, the planet spins, seasons change, birds chatter and call, bears road, crickets rub theIR lil’ legs together, wolves howl and howl, can you hear them? do you hear the calling? the pipes of old, the ocean and wind and flames and tectonic plates grinding, pushing and pulling, tidal waltz. This energy boosts the boots, to get out and walk, face the rain and cold. get up, get out, Stand, shout, dance, sing. This is the time for humans to be human and walk, talk, laugh and move. Now.

On the island, the tension builds in cycles, resolving and catching up with each other, falling and rising together at once, hope and fear, spiralling out, truth and lies, beauty and the ugly spun into threads, moving through the dawn branches of the trees, the silhouette of a city falls away, the sun bursting through the smoke and haze, the noise of traffic lost in the music of branches, leaves, grass and bird song. The force stronger the further away one gets from the bank, the earth and soil greet the feet like royalty, the mystery builds, flowers bloom and die, fungus creeps, night and day pass, the twilight and mi-light, the Toa and the sung from the dung, the Witch elm and the sheep song, the monolith and the megalith, the stone, the page and the hieroglyph. Descending underground.

Facing facades, haunting sleep people, shades and blotches of men, women, pets, objects, connected by a force including Tesla and Einstein. Mad scientists and visionary artists, skipping down the lanes, through the blooms and blossoms, wind in hair, hand on heart, flute and cello, oboe and turntable darting through the body, across the moors, up out the clouds, into outer space, back to the mantle, the waves, the deep sea sinkholes and as yet undiscovered caves. The arctic tundra, the desert hot songs of rivers lost to man, to the unseen pathways cut by ants and clever rodents, to the homing pigeon, dolphin sonar and tardigrade I raise my hat. Signed, sealed delivered I’m yours, most earnestly, Steven Pratt. Trumpets and French horn fade out to repeating theme. Time, love, family, action. truth beauty, health, satisfaction. Fiction, narrative, justice, language, hope, dope, divinity, clarity.

On closing, all channels are open. International, all beings, spirits, demons, angels and entities. Land close by, I’ll see you good. No need to sweat it, take it easy, let the intuition guide the ladder and the slide, snakes, take a ride. Ups and downs all the way, left-brain, right brain let the sea sway the river bank pay. Rudderless, fearless, the boat powers on, land after land, island after island, in service of harmony, fuck the money, I want life. I want truth and heart, shared resources, good sources, well meaning folk. From every inch of this cosmic yolk, for this place I bow and give thanks, I wish I could change war tanks into fish tanks. I want to turn guns into walking sticks, bombs into gardens, chemical weapons into clean drinking water. With the help of new technology the world can evolve into an artists paradise, where goats play jazz and we visit art openings in the forest by mice.

Oh, Akhnaton, Ankh, what Egyptian deities drift about my pipe? in the book, under the stairs, in your stares, in these tales, the psycho tempo, the stabbing and double bass violin wounds, nearly horror but then mystery and wonder, moving arpeggios, across scale, through the woods. Into the forest, out the burrow, running, away from the city, blinded by human glutton, leaping against the urban lights, darting past trunks and over barbed wire fences, sweating and striding further out toward the moon, jumping higher, as if pursued by demons with chattering teeth, always just a hair’s whisker behind, our dream hero streams away, the sun rises, the corn fields glow golden, the water can be heard trickling ahead, the birds sing a familiar song again, the pipes lead the low hero home, tuba and french horn greet the intrepid tripperdome. Resolve, dinner, kick off the slippers. Open are the double doors, stars streak in. Open, unlocked, soothing nectar dripping off the spoon. Can I lick it? let freedom reign and ring.

Flies, can you believe it. octopi and mosses gather, in chorus. An uprising, a tidal movement. pollen on the air. Spores. Oh, my. How they do connect underground. Naturally, blooming. Continents collide, stars fizzle, we breath and find a way out. Out and over around, through, off. My head buried in natural sands of Tulum, under the water with crocodiles, away in the canopy, deaf from the relentless marching bands of New orleans, the elephants and lost rhino, oh, the damage done. Capitalism. Oh, oh, the news, the toxic opposite of just an innocent puddle, of any way out of the muddle, the murk, the constant bickering of the berserk, the loons, all knowing folk of two moons, abuse of the language,  coercion, sewing of hate, divide, the split, the shit of it all. Forget that. The bee is trying to tell me, trying to get through to my thick skull, time is tight, maybe this, maybe tonight? to wrap up, rhyme up, post up, post it. Go on. Fish my bike out the canal, save a mystery.

–Steve Fly

Amsterdam, 02.44 A.M. Saturday 19th May, 2018.