I. After
Time stopped curling
round the end
of the year we went
inside for
good.
Dignity was
shredded at
-mosphere
despite the lies –
Family was
found again,
excluding those
who breathed too
long outside.
II. We
To build a life in
-side perma
-nent walls:
new brick
-layers, car
-penters, air
techs and arc
-hitects, sol
-ar chemists
spinning gold
-en windows
everywhere.
the tube
became a cyclic
sprint
into another
day:
safely breathing
amber air behind
the walls remain
the same.
III. Emerge
The gentle sun at last
through the windows
we emerge:
once a year
the solar storms
subside aligned
for two
-hundred
blessed hours
in beyond
the speckled pane –
becomes the eye
unaccustomed
to colour – can you
believe
they used
to watch
the sun
-set in the atmo
-sphere, just
like this,
every
night?
IV. Into
I am growing into the field like a boulder grows into moss.
I am forgetting the drab screwtape of the yellow pane’s color shift.
I am walking into the field with a picnic basket and a geiger counter.
I am rubbing myself dutifully with SPF 145 just before the warning timer sounds.
I am sleeping into the field like a forgotten dream sleeps out of being.
I am reconsidering my patterns inside the walls outside the walls.
I am blooming into the field of prairie growth my bones and neurons yearn to be.
I am planning a final elopement before the windows seal again.
I am cursing into the field all my anger at the generations who let tipping points occur.
I am unable to return. I am unable to return. I am unable to return.
V. Light
I had already decided as I watched the chemistry detail mix their final measurement of quick-curing glass and pour it carefully into the mould for the aperture. Two workers then lifted the pane and pushed it into place; a third started caulking the seam. As it dried, I stepped forward from behind the rocky outcrop. One of them saw me through the window and dropped his jaw. Panicking, he pointed and yelled: I couldn’t hear a word, but I saw the spittle flying from his lips and the change in colour in his cheeks. His poor, yellow cheeks. I saw the captive crowd agitate. I imagined the sound of bees, and even buzzed once – out loud, but softly; almost against my will. I saw three fists begin pounding on the amber glass, but the security detail was arriving now. The officers pulled them back. I smiled, then took a step back, crunching gravel with my heel. The worker with the caulk gun shook his head at the crowd, holding up his hands, then nodded at the head officer before he turned to me. An amber tear rolled down his face as he finished sealing the lower right seam. I turned around and walked into the field. Then everything was hot. I pictured the free radicals of solar winds slicing into me, increasingly undeterred by the earth’s disintegrating electromagnetic fields. We probably had a few good annual outings left. Then everything was bright. I fell into the field on fire, kneeling. Then everything was light—
Notes:
tommib // squarepusher // put it on repeat
the gentle sun at last
through the windows
we emerge
there was a curse
there was a human disaster
periodic forced hibernation from a toxic world (it grows longer and longer)
every year once a year we can emerge again
the windows open
like the eye of a hurricane: calm between storm walls
it used to be outside most of the time
now it’s changed, inside most of the time
just once we taste the air
THERE MUST BE A SPIRITUAL REDEMPTION
how can I illustrate beauty among a dystopia // how can this piece embody the hopeful tones of the numinous music // not merely another dystopia cityscape but a solarpunk vision, a kernel of hope, a human element persisting in looming climate chaos because it can // because it must // the way the music leads back to gentle dust in sunlight, calm
how can we maintain connections to the natural when our species constantly changes the foundations for life
(what is natural anymore, she said)
how would it feel to be young:
to feel the windows open for the first time, to imprint that memory at age three
screaming DNA of our ancestors when it feels the old world
NO MORE CYCLED AIR
NO MORE SUN LAMPS
now we see and feel the city from the outside
recognition of the walls: safety/prison
who did this to us
snowstalgia
D.W. Baker is a submerging poet from St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, who writes about place, bodies, belonging, and the end of the world. His work appears in Green Ink Poetry, Soft Star Magazine, Queerlings, and voidspace 8, among others, and has been nominated for Best of the Net. He reads poetry for Cosmic Daffodil and Hearth & Coffin. See more of his work at linktr.ee/dwbaker