Sunday Walk

A woman runs into the street dressed in pyjamas

Screaming for help, something’s happened inside

Ambulance arrives and I don’t have to help her

And relieved and ashamed, hood up, I walk on by

To a freezing January park

Abandoned Christmas trees

And orange, late-afternoon sun

And a desperate message from a desperate friend

“What the fuck am I doing?” and “It’s too hard”

And “The feeling’s all gone”

And I joke, “2012 will make it all okay”

And I almost believe it myself and push send

And I walk with my terror and the sound of the crows

Guessing at the end

They’ve drained the lake

In the centre

And the monkeys walk the concrete paths

And head home, make a packed lunch

Prepare themselves for Monday

And their roles in the end-times

As days fly past

I look at the skin on my hands

Cracked and broken against the bark of the tree

I want to melt into everything

Same old thought pattern, same old me

I think, only a few years to go now

Till dimension shift or eco-systemic collapse

Only a few days to go now

Till I relapse

Singing, civilisation’s a death machine

And it can’t be saved

And the whole thing has to fall

So invoke the ghosts of the sacred plants

And the old, old faith

Hear the insect hive mind call

Through the cold shoots and spindles and dead leaves

Far from the city in a forest in my brain

Like a radio, cutting in and out in the howl of the wind

And the week rushing for me like a freight train

And the week rushing for me

They’ve drained the lake

In the centre

And the monkeys walk the concrete paths

And head home, make a packed lunch

Prepare myself for Monday

And my role in the death machine

As the days fly past

I sit on a low branch and watch the Sunday walkers

Hear sirens across the grass

I miss my friends and the hills of my home

And my god, I miss the past

I see trees make twisted alien shapes

In front of a dying sky

I watch the birds above the lake

And open myself up to winter and her spies