Plenty

The cups you fill for pleasure
Drain the heavens in one dry heave
Until the pale granite sky
Shines its broken stars back
Down the parsec-riddled dark
To another useless midnight.

I burn my memoires in the grate.
I scorn the fields with ash.
I drink the wine of plenty to forget
What we have done.

The plate is passed;
In the ritual of offering
Some tribute is expected.

Gnaw the rindless trees to death
Until the earth herself revolts
And arches her strong back
Till the wind of change
Deserts us.

Circumnavigate
The weathered globe,
The withered ecosphere.

In just this tiny space,
This brief span of time,
Collect the beaten gold
Which will not fade.

See if it fits your hollow teeth
For it cannot ease your hunger any more.

© BH, 1988/2018/2020

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Well, I think it was 1988. But, hey, I'd been clearing up crumpled scraps from as far back as 1969.

Then, I thought it might be of some note to push out something I wrote from a time before the interweb. Why, times before devices, times of Sinclair ZX Spectra and BBC computers, yes, times before we became so aware.

Here's the news: the world was going to hell in a handbasket even then. And way before then. But, who's counting?

For what it's worth, I think I made a good start to it. I was nearly 40 so I really should have matured just a tad.

I tidied up a few irky bits - but not many - honest. And here it is. 

Plenty! The land of… Illusion, more like…