As It Is

My response to Dylan Thomas’s “Once It Was The Colour Of Saying”.
This is about the failure of education, the loss of compassion, and the death of integrity.


Original digital surreal art: “Futility Of Caring” by: rob kistner © 10/3/23

 
Our hunger for green knowledge
starved bone brittle by hollow echoes
slap sided on dead end chalk boards
askew in silent black-roofed facades
screams into a cold shadowed void
as once it was the colour of saying

now the great roaring unclean
surge and swindle

dumbly blank

whispering in tangled tongues
of forfeit’s hard foolishness

as the liars rise up to backslide
over taunted poison waterfalls
on revved up motors of ridicule
burning the fuel of unrefined truth

now the gentle seaslides of saying
I must undo
with fist and swift

seeing one-eyed blind
through the exasperation
of sullen box-bound broke light
to the heart meat of slain freedom

families bury safety and sanity
in fields of concrete and clay

as dangerous lovers
in the dirt of their leafy beds
hide and huddle

concealing the sly reasons
for held secrets
and unsung songs

spinning wild fiction
in whirlpools of deafening chaos
and dead flowers

now my saying shall be my undoing
knowing the bloodied futility
of the toxic dull-ached search

because veracity is soul-orphaned
pronounced grey-bluingly dead…
…no longer green


Original digital surreal art: “Death of Truth”
by: rob kistner © 10/3/23

*
rob kistner © 10/3/23
Poetry at: dVerse

 

16 thoughts on “As It Is”

  1. Oh Rob, this is so Dylanesque and yet a modern poem on topical themes. I love the sounds in the lines:
    ‘…starved bone brittle by hollow echoes
    slap sided on dead end chalk boards’
    and
    ‘dumbly blank

    whispering in tangled tongues
    of forfeit’s hard foolishness’.

    And these lines made me feel so sad:
    ‘because veracity is orphaned
    pronounced bluingly dead…
    …no longer green’.

  2. Oh wow, Rob! I love Dylan Thomas’ works… and what you did here is quite marvellous. Reading this, you both could have swapped notes. Such an excellent piece of writing – what a great response poem. Love, where it took you.

    1. Thank you very much Dora. This one was written very SOC then edited through several read throughs. I am happy with the result, and I am pleased you enjoyed it… 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *