Past and Future

The dust creeps across the landscape

carried by a gentle breeze.

-

Worn bodies breathe it in,

double over, start to wheeze.

-

This field separates us.

Barbed wire and trenches,

-

a thousand unmarked graves,

unattainable bodies.

-

The bog, so furious.

-

Clouds drift with more freedom

than we will ever own,

swallowing the birds which venture too close.

-

A few years from now,

spaceships will prove even freer

so unreal in their freedom that their

truth will be in doubt.

-

Wires stretch across this sodden mess

of mud, and blood, and unseen faces

dragging their secrets

in jolts and sparks.

Tesla and Edison, at war, unseen.

-

When I wake up,

they’re at the end of my bed.

The first time I ever saw their eyes,

peering from behind bandages

red, fiery, as furious as the

lands which they were saved from.

-

Infected with that rage, to be passed down

a hundred generations — a curse on all who come too close,

spread through DNA which takes hold like a tree’s root.

-

The sky has changed now,

from grey to blood red.

-

A priest is beaten to a pulp

We all shrug, and then drink.