Last surrender compassion
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Long before sundead so worse, nothing like. Sick skin of planet beyond healing, in throes in stupor in fury Upheaving
tidescars & crippled harvests, choked landfull seared & drenched, all feral claimed. Its certainties crumped, earth clings its debris tight. Roam of leftovers—posthumans aloof, rewilding, chemistry’s spinoffs, wights in witness—to tremors, fierce to fierce, scavenge so unlike. Wounds within heads, venom without, marked not to endlessness. Last surrender compassion, unlikewise, depletion of empathy, care ruin-scattered, all compassion spent. End of tenure clear now, locked out nought to play for, fate accomplished. Play out finishing torment, not wait dreading, pain unshared for all the world like nothing, settle the sick ghost species, its settling, no less worse. Where all same, all future annulled. Yet—spilled from more terror look One two three stumbling together from scarred trees seared bushes, see now how. Woman can man can child will. One more last last chance, no none but. Water salvaged, away. Sea drift collect rain, parched scooping curragh, water salves, away horizon blur somehow seek others avoid others find land wary seek others, weary fear yet not fear. Corpsed shingle touchdown, low vague sun. Land-drawn scan, height shelter dread heat, river roots grub, fire drawn, then what Other undead eyes of village diseased, other hands telling. How almost playful, how somehow possible, impossibility fresh to confront. Revert then to language, to listen, notion of help, notion of share, of ex-future still gestures of welcome, relief likewise it could be Keep being, keep being within nothing like compassion reimagined where all ending Spent planet slow so much less worse |
Kevin Armor Harris lives in England. The author of several non-fiction titles, he now writes prose poems and short fictions, working towards a form of writing that asserts the significance of compassion in the Anthropocene.