Hush Up

Shush now lip zip

Dismal craters in the land are getting hard to hide

Don’t tell your children

Shut the windows

Lock the doors

Sink the house

MUMmy–

Beneath

The hushed up, stopped up, wrapped up seams

Of glitter quartz and golden dreams

Where truth once glinted, scented sage

‘Til men mined it out and up and far away,

In malady of mind they made it

Malleable and mystical

Material and multiplied

Deceitful treasures, bane of men

Melted down and even then they bewitch the senses,

Smothering liquid hallucinations

Over sightless ticking cogs within,

Ordering in pompous whispers

there are little CAVES out the window in the dirt–

don’t tell

Deeper down beneath

The hushed up, stopped up, wrapped up seams

Of gyri hills and sulci streams

Here we silence for shame and fear of blame

Boosting hope and burning flame

Of pain on pain and mystery on misery of mystery

Of pain on pain and scalpels slicing into miserable mystery

Or scalpel wish and talon fingered gouging out reality,

With bloody gunky shredding nails

We tear up the peaks and valleys of our minds

Like little gods who laugh and wind up the cosmic clock

Until it springs and jumps and shatters

So everything that matters

Does not fit

And is not known

And is not found

Is always blown to bits and buried underneath the funeral mound

Somewhere, somewhere down

can I GO OUT and play in them?

don’t tell

Deeper underneath

The hushed up, sopped up, lashed up seams

Of glitter thought and golden dreams

Where sharp-edged sockets, those wasted tombs

Stick witless dust and blood to scrabbling fingers

Keep on looking without showing

The things we know we’ll never know

The screams we know but which could go

While the true shepherd of meek whisperers

Says he knows, you know you know

How fun that we don’t know

He says these are the things that children know

But they don’t know they know, you know

And what we know we don’t,

It’s punched through full of holes

Gaps we hide behind our backs

Flaws locked outside with doors and windows

And the children want to know

Muuuum, there might be TREASURE in those caves!

Don’t tell

Turn around, give up the game, the children know that we don’t know

But they’re not sure still what we’re hiding

In these outstretched fists of ours

Oh stop pretending at the only game we know how to play

The world probably might be isn’t ending

Very rude for interrupting

Demands for faith and love and worship

Shooting poor souls from the hip,

And all those gods who never speak

Drinking life and hopes until dust-meet

Can’t tell right from left

Pit from gem

Or dirt from sky

Who to go to with complaints?

The sustainer so you shall not faint

The sulci streams we clog with cake

The cosmic bang, that cowboy slinger

The zero point, the glass-crack singer

The dying seas, the rainbow serpent

The god who calls his own to shatter

Your simper neighbour nice knee-patter?

My knee is comforted

My knee knows all

I’m opening the window!

Don’t tell

Beneath

The hushed up, sopped up, lashed up seams

Of gyri hills and sulci streams

If only we could lift the house to far away

Above unbelievable lands bright-eyed in day,

From sky a solvent could descend

Gold or gems in test tube glory glowing boldly

Something other, something holy

Never forced upon the dismal plains

Beneath an empty heaven’s pains

Then able to admit really you know nothing

And the other grown-ups, too, they’re bluffing

But

Heeee I could fit my HEAD in!

Don’t tell

The house is sunken underground

Tonnes of holey dirt weigh down the roof

And now there is no need for proof

That ever there were jewels down here

Or gold to grin from ear to ear

And if there were, would it matter?

Didn’t those above, before, just age and shatter?

Still the worth they took has left behind

Just empty holes for kids to find

Dangerous spaces to explore

Yet maybe traces hint at something more,

Something clear-sighted, even-handed

Stitches for the slices in these searching fingers

Just a little mercy, please

Right, left, left, right

Pit, gem, pit, pit

Sky, dirt, dirt, dirt

Was everything just half tried?

If we looked a little harder

Adults with clenched fists on hips

We could find what ancient miners found

Or what they didn’t find:

That last watch-piece, the final gem

That shining cog, that sighted eye

That perfect scale, that speaking sky

But until then and even then

They would think we still weren’t telling

And surely you would wonder too

Yet maybe you really do know

Where all the jewels of truth go

But oh just please just please ‘til then

–kiddo, don’t you even THINK about it!

You’re dreaming, it’s just dirt–

Don’t tell

–

2016-2017