Poetry Showcase from S.C. Flynn

from pixabay

SALT LAKE

Sometimes the future’s flight is straight and smooth
like shining summer runways
but then it brings you way out here
where the ground is endless crust
that snaps underneath your feet
to free the thick black sludge that lurks below
and where the trees are pale dry prisoners
thrust deep in permanent winter,
their bony arms stretched wide in pleading
to whoever might have put them here.
Perhaps they come alive each night and clash -
giant skeletons under polished moon shield -
sharp cracking blows breaking a silence
that no one has ever heard
but then as dawn approaches they stiffen,
joints crunching as their backs grow rigid
and their hands lift once again in agony
as they stand to face the sun’s cruel gaze
like driftwood carved with strange inscriptions.

This is my forever world. I walk in,
crunching through the flat white sheet
to sink in the squelching dark below
so my footsteps stretch behind me
like black ink spattered on a page;
no wind will ever shift them,
so when one day you reach this place
you’ll know just what they mean.
I belong out here where nothing changes;
soon I’ll be just a dense heart of decay,
an elemental core of toxic life waste,
my attention span shrunk to a painful dot 
while random dreams circle round my head.
I take my place among the guilty naked;
my roots were poisoned long ago
and now my limbs can harden and set.

TWELFTH VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS
Uluru, central Australia, tomorrow night

The sky kite must be much the same
but looking up has changed;
war in space is the new theology.
Rocket junk floats like so many heresies
and orbiting communication links
have shouted down the angelic orders.
Any old poet who versed to paradise now
would have to dodge the pieces
and when they start shooting
each other's things down with missiles
we'll all end up in inferno.
Every species on earth
is a sacrificial victim
slowly bleeding to death
in the branches of this blurry tree.

BETWEEN MEATH AND KILDARE

I wander, a solitary forager
like Australia’s formidable Bull Ant,
a creature that refuses to abandon
existence no matter what it suffers,
but my mind keeps going back and forth,
asking if life is just a random line
on a map without scale or direction,
as the Royal Canal I’m following
passes from Meath to Kildare and back again.
Maybe these kinds of thoughts were useful once,
when contemplation could find solutions,
but now they are unnecessary tortures
that drive me on with ant-like stings and pincers
through Kildare to Meath and back again.   

APRIL 23RD

I must have often walked on death unknowing,
but at Clontarf the mail coat presses my shoulders
as I wade ashore at dawn, spear and shield in hand.
Our fleet’s square sails flap behind me in the breeze
while the dragons’ eyes seek our enemy
and their little spears that swarm like flies.
By next high tide our leader will be king as promised
or the battle-watchers will have claimed us all;
the water leaves us no retreat, but none is wanted.
Today I weave a strand in history’s tapestry.


Biography: S.C. Flynn was born in Australia of Irish origin and now lives in Dublin. His poetry has been published in many magazines, including The Honest Ulsterman, Cyphers, Abridged and Orbis.