The Salt of Stones

Some say that opulence
can be spurned from trash,
beauty cut from carbon, and
minted cash spat from the hands
of the dirt-poor to form the monoliths
of the rich that rise tall -
but they forget
that before we stand, we crawl:
shaping love into our kneecaps
and the snaps of our brittle bones.
We’ve been suckled from the salt of stones
and the peaceable scrawls of our old
apostles’ apathy, which we emulate
with the empty coal-toned bleats
of shackled sheep.

And though we speak
of angels and dove-tail
rhetoric, what makes us who we are
is not some higher being, or some flicker
of the supernatural, but our god-tongued
culture: the lick of colour and crescendo
in each flag we strive to thrive under. For
we may pray to the beleaguered skyspaces, but
we’re only prey to our own parasitic verse; the traces
of each concrete cleft we’ve cradled,
stitched and nursed.

Now we’ve bled our grassroots dry.
Our earth is worn and ember-dead, mined
cold, while our ‘scrapers split the sky.
Tithed to a god who always aches for more,
bent-backed, all we’re left with
are the kidney stones that clatter
and clack. The flinted lip
has become a fissure, stitched.

Reality is what we’re led
to believe; what we want to perceive -
we know only what society shows
is true; what can be gleaned from a city
that spits in smokescreen tones.
Who we are is what we spend: we’re
just the means to our own end. Like match-sticks
we’re made to burn – black or blue –
and only the head-stones have learned
to savour the wordlessness
of truth.

* * *

I've been meaning to write something more political for a while, but I was hoping for something a little more clear-cut and focused...

Being ill muddles my thoughts. And this is probably far more coherent than the timed essays I've written in the past few days (oh dear).

Inspired by Angelspit’s 'Ditch the Rest' (and the whole of their 'Hideous and Perfect' album, whilst the title is taken from a song by I:Scintilla.