TREE and TREE II

 

A Note On TREES

TREES

What are trees is not a semblance of permanence, a monumental proof of nature’s eternal quest to reach for the sun? And why is mankind so intent on eradicating these colossal reminders of our inferiority?

From tree-fellers to tree-huggers, a sense of urgency is felt, a point of no return once that which stood for centuries can be brought down in seconds. Are we innately predisposed towards the destruction of the very same natural environments that nurture us?

Seeing that trees, in an age-old embrace hold the earth intact against erosion - the earth upon which we source our being; how will their absence impact our sense of rootedness when the earth itself will flow beneath our feet in mud slides? 

Is there a secret life of a billion charred trees, a secret language as has been postulated; a song sung by forests under cover of stars or inclement weather of this impending fifth extinction? 

Would humanity even comprehend or understand this melody, this ten million year old conversation akin to that of self-reflective organisms born for life and breath of this planet?

Does humanity yearn to grasp and read the score of these secret whispers of ancient trees, a wisdom that withstood epochs of unimaginable catastrophes?

Can we decipher those secret biologies and networks of mutually branching roots, clad beneath fertile ground and blankets of seeds and leaves?

Of all the ruins we craft in the midst of trees and shrubs, none remain once left to the onslaught of uncurbed roots and branches paying no heed to human masonry. 

And whilst humanity obsesses over robust manufacture of permanent structures to rival all of nature’s longstanding presence before and after man, humanity also harbours a certainty that ours is a futile attempt at taming our collective resuscitators and benefactors. 

Will we again walk with trees, and not merely among them like tourists at a sacred shrine, but devotees to a journey into the future, shuffling and shifting the ground together in kindred spirit?

Parody

 A mind’s stealthy journey into silent dreams

Is often colorless and borderless, with

Unsuitable tasks for the soul,

Where brisk breezes and swells of an inner sea

Art suffused with complete pagan anonymities.

In a reverie choked with fits of black winged melancholy,

Time’s blunt scissors bite into it, 

Ghastly cuts that mince a brain

With decayed creations from inner purgatories

Navigated alone in a parody of certain doom.

And he is hiding in there, on an amateur mission

Assigned often too beautifully to morbid souls.

With bandaged toes gashed by broken glass 

That tore through stranded boots 

Caked with slaughterhouse muck and villainy,

He is left with gestures abbreviated by a twitching hand 

Shaking in accurate dread and supplication.

Yet, it is in there, where he, a condemned volunteer sits in calm repose,

With bakery-scents and exhaust fumes kindling embers of an insatiable rage,

Only to abate in self-immolation and sacrifice upon fiery stakes

Alighting its return journey towards screaming nightmares,

Of formless laments from fertile hinterlands pillaged for memories.  

GLOW II

 

On Life

Is life reduced to a tidy parable about virtues of hard work, a gospel of tyrannies that will forever spawn every day’s cynical discontents and dissidents?

Or is life a haunting parody, a series of misguiding hurdles leading towards a precipice, an abyss for all ingested aims festering in garbage pails of gluttonous restaurants?

Does it all seem worth the pounding chest, this futile rebellious assault at chance and its measure of man’s value; its maladies disguised as fortunes won?

Is life an inimitable violence against ecologies and psychologies, a mere nomad’s lost trip down lanes marked for death and starvation?

Is life intent on being its own death as proof of having been aimlessly whirling among stars peopling the skies?

What befits this coy joke as a jest in kind for those suffocating us in option-less cycles of waking to pledge their hands for earth’s sacrilegious pillage?

Is it all a discordant symphony of wails and shrieks, muzzled moans of death defying experts of the art of living, during their scouts for game and final plunder?

Does life follow a formula for surviving such an apocalypse in a day, an atomic scandal the next and an avalanche of ill truths about visible lies eaten with caviar?

Could life be a maze for rats filled with syringed laxatives and energizers, invisible tubes inserted into crania of hoards linked to one central panic?

Is not this life but sleep on the bosom of deceit, warmed by child labor from cradle to graves dug for minerals worn by commanders of wealth like badges?

Would life be about livelihoods when venerated desires are sacramental to those deprived and abominable to the privileged?

Could this life be a suicide mission for time travellers lost in a sea of mistakes rewound eternally as new time for new faults with new erasures?

Is this life and endless quest for unanswerable queries unto the divine who lost the incorruptible meaning of life from the onset of all life?

Is life but death’s lists of conquests, a deranged collage of mud and blood in an obscure biology, depicting an endless tale of flickers in a colossal darkness? 

Khahliso Matela

GLOW II - Video Images

 

GLOW - Images By Khahliso Matela