Oops, I accidentally wrote my first poem

There I was, putting the finishing touches to a long-overdue post … when suddenly a poem came to mind.

It’s pretty cheesy since I bashed it out in an hour and I haven’t written poetry before. Well, not since I was about 12.

But what the hell: the worst that can happen is that everyone thinks one of my sons has hijacked my WordPress account. I’ll stick it here — if only to broadcast the message that Vivid is alive! The ‘proper’ post will follow this short intermission …

Stopped

It’s stopped.
The revving, the roaring
That jarring global snoring
The drone and growl that underscored our lives

The fume-spewing machinery
The death by metal speedery
The diesel-driven blades that slashed the trees

The monolithic stations
Fast tubes at elevations
Slicing paths through wincing, mournful skies

The land-raping equipment
Plastics by the shipment
Natural cures corrupted for the coin

All this to bend our forms such
That nothing really meant much
We didn’t know from what we grew or why

Pollutants choked the mute soil
Sea life cooked in wrong oil
We laboured on; not caring if we’d fry

But listen how it’s changed round
Stay still you’ll hear a new sound
Because
guess what
for all of that
It’s stopped.

Spent
Silenced
Gone.
For good.

No black blood to curse our veins
No more acid in the rains
It’s stopped
And we can breathe and see
and hear and smell again.

Words cannot describe this
deepest peace this pure bliss
An auditory epiphany
That planetary symphonies
were playing out behind the wall of noise

Future tribes won’t know the price
We paid to cope
With burning hope
Before the opportune demise
Of what we thought eternal
Invented once, ephemeral.

They named it the Infernal.
Combustion Engine.
Or some such bloody thing.