Author Archives: H.C.A Agate

Tomino’s Hell on earth

the air raid sirens 

i ran for cover 

& i told You 

I’ll see you after work –

Your smile a mimicry of the glistening diamond 

hanging on a chain around your neck.

shadows pooled in the hollow

of Your cheeks

blood flooding into bottomless pupils 

& You drink the poisoned rain like water  

blinded by the screams of Your parched throat 

begging for nourishment.

You watched me & Your tongue 

caressed the inner edge of the blade

a fallen angel blinded by blood like droplets of rain –

one arm outstretched and the other

hollow like Your eyes 

You came to search for me 

Your mind clinging to this hope as

Your barely living body wandered 

through the burning buildings and the corpses littered across the streets

ーa mass grave 

You stopped across from me

and Your hollowed out eyes met my gaze while

i cried tears of blood, 

sorrow paralysing me behind the corrugated iron door

and then the world behind You lit up as if the sun was rising 

with a backdrop of warm orange

when the flames enveloped You, You grew wings of fire

like that of a burning angel, falling into hell

and around Your neck hung a diamond 

rendered to ash by the scorching fire

The sand and our disturbances

The sand and our disturbances 

Tracing the soft, almost tender ridges in the sand 

They beg me to wonder…

Somewhere at the beginning of time 

Was the sand ever still?

Still without ridges

Without the susurrations of wind 

Unsettling it  

Without the human weight 

Moulding it into soft crests 

Before it shifted with time and displacement 

Was it ever unmoving, 

The closest experience we can ever get to a standstill 

When time doesn’t seem to pass? 

A time 

Where I can watch with my eye upturned 

To an unwavering sun

On an unwavering country 

In an unwavering world 

An omnipresent assurance 

That in a time before human sin,

Before human tarnish 

We would remain just like that

Not perfect

But still 

Not silent 

But at a point of tranquility 

A time 

Will we intertwine our visions

Like the fading autumn leaves,

When gone…when dead

Is the beauty of nature

A time

Will we wander?

But lost means nothing without the distillation of time…

A time

Will we matter?

But to matter…

…To matter is to be the first to bring life to the sand. 

Will you point out the way that I have to force the air out

Swift and hard,

Just to make a dent? 

Will you ridicule the way 

I crouch there at the edge

Desperate to stir the sand

As you manipulate it into eddies

That I blink away

only to be blinded by them again?

Will you laugh at me 

Like all my effort is a joke?

The sand 

And your disturbances.

Enough

I finally understand what you mean by

The

Cold.

The way it creeps in

And takes root

Not just in your skin

But in your mind

The cold.

You feel it because you’re alone,

Without anyone to warm you,

Warmth triumphs the cold

Or maybe

You just forget it’s there.

Because…

In the warmth you feel

Like

Someone loves you

Enough… Enough that you

never

feel alone

Destroyer

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You say we’re both too strong to let go

You say it takes courage to hold on

Will. Strength. Courage.

That’s all there is left..

Because hope is too abstract for you to grasp

To comprehend

To capture

As the wind that pushes you on

And on.

As the wind that can only make you strong

Ever stronger

Until the only thing you can do

is destroy.

You told me. Now tell me.

You told me you hated the world outside,

Your disembodied feelings

Your incapacity to capture them

You, incapable of saving the world crumbling around you.

Yet when you stand in the road,

Noise like rain that slashes at you, under an umbrella,

When you stand there,

Your eyes directionless,

Your body motionless,

Where no one takes much notice

Of you.

In the city

Where you say no one will find you

Unless they look for you

It’s there,

It’s in the way you’re still

In the way you let yourself fall into the comforting arms

Of

Normality

That you tell me.

The world outside

Is nothing but an ugly beauty.

And you,

Lost in it.

Tempus, Temporis

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Line after line,

The hands trace the protected,

glass smooth,

glass distant,

face

with a ghostlike murmuring of

a

touch.

You cannot see the ginger ripples that it etches

into

the

surface…

You cannot see the tentative movements laid

bare in each omnipresent tick…

But you can feel how the light changes,

The steady, familiar outreach of

Light…dark

Light…dark

Matching the rhythms beating beneath those hands.

Its constancy, a clever guise

for something that can bound so easily beyond the reach

of your

outstretched

hands.

For something that brushes by-

Even in the sunken depths

of

your

dreams

Poem I

Return

My eyes blinded

I stumble…

I stumble

Blinded

Not by the overwhelming presence of light

Or the tidal waves of the dark

But the absence of you

That absence

Once the presence

Of

You

They say there is no light

Without the dark

No dark without

The light

I could say this

Turn it over and over

In my head

But I know that

Plainly…simply

There is no absence

Without the presence

Of you

Quote#108

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Quote#107

Image by Yuriy Kovalev on Unsplash