Rise
Rise
If I were fully human
I could come to you in the dark
as I do in the light,
I could smile fearlessly in the street.
I could just be, as I am to be,
and know it is right.
If I were fully human
I would no longer shun the dreams
of Theseus and of Blake
along with the terrors of my own.
We were born
but at what cost?
What price salvation
now?
The problems of yesterday’s cigarettes
and this morning’s
are crumpled up with the bed linen
on which the cat sleeps, oblivious.
There are clouds now,
oppressing this day
and crushing the remnant
of my humanity.
If I could just be human
I could see the dark
in me fertilising the light
and I wouldn’t be afraid.
If I were fully human
I would throw myself
into the glowing embers
of your dissolution
and rise with you
from your essentially ashes.
But the price!
oh what price it is
to be annihilated
for retribution, restitution.
To walk the hallowed halls
of hell is the lot of all mankind,
unwanted and unseen
beneath the mask
of the illusion of freedom,
to do, by breathing,
the destruction that
our Dragon flames
would do
without regret.
I will meet you in the coffee shop
on George that we always use,
I will sit opposite you,
the circle complete
and for just a moment
I will rise and sing in my cage
and I will taste what it means
to be begin to be human.
Peter Cartwright
June 2016
