'Mirage'
Oceans of barren heat
Scarce a drop to quench our thirst
What life could cling out here?
What desperate forms could eke some blessed moisture
From land without shape, without soul.
Ever-morphing dunes the
Homogenous wreck of
All that ever was, that is,
Futures unimagined now
Ground to solar-beaten dust.
The horizon breaks!
Great trees and twisting vines,
Chaotic music of countless wings
Beating in divine chorus,
A hymn for thirst abated.
Stumbling forward through searing heat,
Minds long taken beyond
States of reason, of reality,
Fractal fragment-thoughts congealed,
Dragged us, dreaming, to salvation
But, drawing close,
Telltale shimmers give way
To nought but lifeless sand,
Endless desert devours all in
The slow, relentless creep of death.
We ate the forests long ago,
We cannibalised ourselves,
Ancient source of primal fear
Now sustained on life support,
Fenced off from its own children.
Those desert trees,
Mere phantoms of meaning,
Ghosts of life lost to packaged perfection,
Haunted plastic consumes
Last lingering scraps of the real.
Illusion perceived, not shattered,
Onward we march,
No alternative in sight,
Into that spectral jungle,
Let the sand swallow us up.
By Hugo Turner