Concerned Shadows

What are
people to you?
I'd like to see them
throw their arms up and pretend
they can't speak.

Who is it
that has the right to speak?

Fathers have spoken
for far too long and
mothers always
speak too much.
Children, some will say as
they haven't learned
the lies of language.

Yet few of us
in the riddled consortium of
muddled speakers speaks
about the shiny layers of
pulsating skins, dust-clad,
gazing somewhere forward
or in silence looking
back
back at the gates before
the gilded uprising shifted
by the roar of clocks
-THE ROAR OF CLOCKS-
and it's been years spent in waiting
counting days and seconds for
whose return?

No saviours here, no rituals,
no mindless hums stirring
eager hearts, gripping strings and
pushing onward to
the meeting of a meaning a
chance encounter with a pair of
reckless stars preparing themselves
for the feast of needless constructions.

What is this, you say
and why is it staring at me
whispering twisted tongues,
when I never ask it
and cannot hear or see its mouth?
Come now, humour the lightning
if only for a moment. A
moment's enough.

And tell me
what are people to you?
Who is it that gives
the right to speak?

In distant spaces there are
special metaphors conveniently equipped
to tell of the colour of death more
accurately established,
like a fable or a fairytale
beating between four silver walls of
cloudless nights and painting
the fox that hunts the bear in
the night in the wood,
the other wood made up of
skinny, pointed trees folding
their foliage by day, slowly to
climb the river in the valley
of regret.

There is a house there
but no lights. Not even
the flame of a candle or
an oil burner. Not even
a rusty stove or rustic cooker.
The shadows living there
have only each other
huddling around an open hearth.

What they read they
throw into the fire and so
the opposite sides of
the lives that we said,
deeds recounted, stories spun
in meandering descriptions,
renew themselves at dawn.

The shadows there
have only each other
huddled they throw
the words of people
into the hearth
which keeps them warm.

Warmth.
They told me
this is what people are.