ONCE I WOULD(impute consciousness to trees)

and i still believe (in their sentience.Yet see!
how few survive-and know!how knowledge by itself
will not thrive.That gifted yew becomes a fire
This old oak -a fence(not even Art one could bend
for higher intention.Desecration is ordinary prose
Every gifted sapling knows/even to bend will not allow
its young life to be spared.It will not stop this dull destruction
to point to libraries and call them books(the library of the wind!
More fire and fear.More mud and muck.More dirt and dung
The cut and broken among us.Daily as blood butchers
Taken for granted.Silent for themselves.Their arms fenceposts
Their legs tables.Their bodies houses.We wrap ourselves in them
cry for our own cut down wooden futures.It would only be
if we were trees that we could then see our brain leaved
veins in cerebral conversation with prevailing winds
Perhaps our feet planted in ancient earth(chainsawed too early
scream of emptied air no song-more blood sapped dried gray and burning
We already refuse the old and broken/what hope have human forests
when our cities are burning with the cold moon of dispossession
forgotten forests of the crazed ones/sapling children
bowing to a greater power.Don't ask the trees to save us.

BEFORE THIS(and afterward
as if i never existed(even between these lines
You shudder and turn your head away.
I remind you of a time/when you were all that was
and now you must admit/Light as an element
Earth you are(and rock(and fire-
but did you not know/you would be nowhere
without my ministrations?I am air.
And unless you wish to choke
You must breathe me in/and care..

THE TRAGEDY IS THAT I DID NOT KNOW
(i was in a play.I thought character was what was missing
this is why i got upset.The shortcomings of others angered me
in that my expectations were never met.I am not Hamlet!
Beneath above around me spin planets of familiars-
those whose magic abandoned me to the love of those
who loved only their own Fate.
and mine became entangled with theirs!
You would not have known me had I demurred/declined to act
simply affirmed the way things are/and lived a quiet life.
But NO! This show demands response
and blood will be the order of the day
I did not know I was a character.I did not know i was in a play.

THE HOSPITAL IS QUIET(apart from the flash of TV colors
each is asleep,sedated.The hospital is white.(Image of sterility
No germs,no sex-just death(emptying beds(and bed pans
The hospital is neutral/a witness of the broken(who will mend?
Who will be thrown out?The hospital is cool /as air conditioned and linear
as beds positioned in a fantasy of healing.Each in their own cocoon dream
Each one needing.Each one a need.The hospital is clinical.
It will examine.It will see.And those who leave remember that
each hospital is irrespective of its clients.Its contents empty
It refills.The hospital is neutral.Good or ill,
it will be only what you see-a hospital/to meet its needs.