(This short poem is part of a longer series of poems/essays/anecdotes I'm working on that may or may not ever get finished. It's exploring the emotions and turmoil of navigating a cultural context beyond the borders of the colony, trying to figure out what is true and what is merely habit. its a process- so i could be getting it all wrong:P)
I want to change it
sometimes I want to burn it to the ground
other times I want to smooth it over
those wrinkles on the face
touch it
see it
straighten those lines
those edges
those creases
those marks
those scars
those bumps
those bruises
but I am just a child
I was just born here
this is my father's house
my grandmother built it
my great grandfather sowed it
my great great great grandmother earned it
I just live here and see all their mistakes:
I see the flawed foundation because it was not I who laid them down.
I am the one who feels the rain on my back sometimes at night not knowing that there was a time when there was no roof over their heads at all.
And I think that is why it is so easy to forget that while I complain over the cracks and the creases. Walls like caves enclosing me entirely-
I remember those who put them down. A time when there was no house at all.
I am the product of those before me.
I am the infant on the shoulders of giants.
I am the venerator of these saints,
the honourer of these archetypes,
the respecter of these ancestors.
But I cannot help wondering: am I to sacrifice myself to this machine?
Am I meant to be the Vestal Virgin of Greece, buried as a sacrifice to the Hearth?
Is the value of my life dictated by my preservation of the lives no longer here?
Because when I am no longer here, I will request the same of my descendants?
Deep in the woods, the old rotting mansion shifts again, and another beam falls.
Groaning with the rising and falling.
Roils like the sea, rumbles like a hive,
Hums like trees, roar like beasts.
It crumbles- that machine- that rigid tower
Swallowed by undulating earth
ravening
organic
alive
Its roots have a face
And the loam a voice
The rocks cry out-
It claims, it demands, and it shifts with the world it has ushed in
The pregnant moans of Aeons arriving
A house built on sand cannot stand
but what instead?
If the foundation is alive then the house must be swalled entirly
To be Reborn.
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