Inge Haupt
Chewing CudArchive for pain
Searching for Meaning
What do you do when you have no soul?
How do you create order from chaos and pain?
Do you flock to a cotoneaster in bloom
To find meaning amongst the masses?
A myriad of bright orange wings lured by the scent of salvation.
Here is sweet nourishment,
Here a fall of thrumming joy,
Butterflies and bees besieging the blossoms.
This is meaning in a single day:
A day of work, of industrious activity.
The sun catches a wing
And flings it gaily to another branch.
Another sweet chalice of nectar to imbibe,
But soulless remain,
Alone.
For after the dancing cascade in the air,
After the passion, the consummate joy;
After the night falls and white blossoms close,
A lone butterfly with ruby-red wings
That no longer beat with such blissful trust,
Must drift closer and closer
To the ages old truth,
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.
The rich scent of loam, once more to its breast
Gathers the lonely creature,
Devoid of all breath
under wings.
Aging flesh slows and stops and is lost.
And legacies only lie in a memory
Realised in the young,
Who through chaos and pain come
To find meaning amongst the masses.
The Voice
A poet sits quietly on a burnt-out old tyre,
Under a corrugated beam
And waits.
Waits to be heard and paint the world as he sees,
Waits for the screams to roll down the street
On desperate feet.
Red spots flying from blades of glass,
A bright shot, from a barrel dark,
And a huge scythe with an evil gleam
Under which tendrils are teased from an artery.
A symphony of strokes works its way up the body
And rounds punctuate the clouds of smoke.
A burst here,
A scream there,
A shrill, a stutter,
A chorus of clash, crack, thud, thump.
Colours hurled from black to red,
Some fled and others bled.
A poet sits quietly on a burnt-out old tyre
But cannot begin
To describe this hellfire.