HELL ON EARTH?
Like a form of hell here on Earth the climate conspires against us.
Heat heaves and hounds us before forcing us all into place.
The sick and suffering sit as if immune to all pleasures,
As breath itself becomes bartered, twisting temperature
Towards terror, while fast boiling blood tests the cauldron
Of the faltering flesh and masked face. If I sought the air
I might die, with my breath bound by deception. For what
The mask achieves, as with rumour, has precious little
To do with our health. And what else remains in a week
With sun marked flames sent to scorch us, other than
To risk the shattered sky’s sparked surrender, as it weeps
For pity and relief from the heat. An hour’s rain cried
Last night, as if God were speared. Now it’s vapoured.
And in today’s heat ray spreading we may as well be Wells’
Martians, lasered and blazed in defeat. It is the strangest
Turn of events when your enemy is prized weather,
And the previous holidays we once treasured are haunting
Us now through daylight. Ghosts of past lives, in which
We sit stuck to our deck chairs, while the lost pursuits
In imagination run rampant, while we pray with true
Passion for the death’s brief reprieve in the night.
I fight for purpose and health and to be free of wanting
To eat. Food breeds fever. Like a lolling dog I seek shadow,
And stare forlornly up through the glare to either
An ignorant God or a suitably beligerant one, struck
By starlight, contending with his own swollen novas
And a comet’s command to beware. Sky scars appear
Here on earth as I am fighting the force that now holds me.
Wanting cool air more than loving, if the Devil came
Now to soothe me ahead of an angel I am not convinced
I’d resist him, or, even in faith or not, have the strength.
I dream of a cold sea in my house now that Covidian
Legislation forbads it. In short, I dream of drowning
And the cold and chilling kiss of death’s length.
Somebody please save me soon. I ask a weather Angel
I know to inform me. She tells me that Saturday brings
Salvation. It is Wednesday today. My heart fries.
And If your heart fries, then your soul and intemperate skin
Start to simmer. Send me your kiss. Suck. Succeed me.
Blow back into me Some fresh life. Anyone, please.
I am turning to steam. Love’s a fire. Find me too late
I’ll have risen, like air Itself into aether, or the withdrawal
Of hope from closed eyes. For heat like this is a curse.
Heat of this sort is contagion. What else will ride now
Between us as our lost belief bubbles? Perhaps, future
Water will form from the ghosts in the air sweat describes.
As my back bursts into flame I think of a woman I held once
In winter. Her beautiful face was my fire, the source of all
Warmth, for all time. There is a moment’s breeze as I type
To touch the memory in that sentence. But then it withdraws
And I swelter. For what Saturday brings pain may find.
I sit and wait. Somewhere else, I call them to summon rain
From the mountain. Here in the flats and valleys
Let the flood calls come. Float, then rise. I feel myself
Become my own meal, as kidneys are cooked beside
Liver. The heart is last. Oil is flowing. And yet I resist
This strange oven, while between the surface
And sweat souls divide.
David Erdos August 12th 2020
WHEN THE RAIN
In the past, when the great rains came races prayed
To the spectacular Gods on the mountain. Today, no God graces
This particular relief from the heat, as now a strange silence starts
After a fiery roar through the suburbs, torn by Thursday’s London
Monsoon and high anger with which no former scorn or rage
Could compete. I hadn’t slept for a week, a refugee on the floor
Of my lounge, back doors open, daring my neighbours’ cats
And night foxes to Poseidon up from doused gardens
And scavenge me out in my lair. Death by stain or possible
Consumption perhaps, after nearly two weeks of near madness,
In which I watched the world warp within me and before me too,
Undeclared. You could feel the blood rise and hear it bubble
About you, as if the forces that form from the body were signalling
Out through fleshed screams. I would have torn my skin like a coat
To expose the core’s call for cooling. I would have wrenched
My hair that lays heavy if I could have climbed up freedom’s flight
Towards dreams where the world is not as it is in terms of this
Climate of souls and the weather. As the heat in turn, felt like judgement:
The shock of God’s scorn, the fused blush. Which stunned us all
In our seats as I felt my body shock itself into stasis, and I was
Prematurely old. And surrendered. assaulted by burning and blame
In hate’s rush. I certainly hated all things, perspective through
Perspiration extinguished. And it has taken this calming lapse
To cure and return me after watching the encompassing flush
Of God’s piss. Storming us, like a horse in a watered torrent of fire,
Screaming at the ground for what’s happened, by replacing
With smite the sun’s kiss. Which was akin to that of Judas, I’m sure,
As it left a scar on all senses and a scar on skin also as the pigment
Within became singed. You could feel your heart turn to ash
In an internal barbeque of the body. Now that the rains have come
Have they saved us or in washing us clean just revealed
The mire we’ve made, just as my wasted week was ‘Atlantised’.
I feel like fallen prey. As I type this it has started again. No burn
Heals. It is simply covered, part masked. But you remember it still
In the body. Last night I thought of a higher ark cresting
And of own body caged in the flood. From the fire and steam,
To the boil, with my caucasian skin turned to lobster,
From parched ocean floor, Covid parted, to the seas of disbelief,
All our blood. A certain intensity has now passed, in which
The prisoners’ shouts have been sated. But was this just one glass
Of water intended to soothe our protest? Or the first of many
That show no further tribulation awaits us? When is water
Warning? Why, when you’re all at sea. Fate sets tests. Or God does.
Or space. Or skies as slaves to the climate. Sometimes the rains
Drown the mountain. Perhaps this is something that we all should expect.
David Erdos August 14th 2020
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