Self-Cleaning

Abstraction urges
towards form.
Sleeping children
raise their arms,
subconscious,
towards the ever-unfolding
flower of death.
At our molten core,
we hold the greater story.

Beyond the horizon,
houses lay sleeping,
sucking down
electricity;
automatic coffee pots,
alarm clocks,
flat-screen tvs,
self-cleaning ovens.

There is a sweetness
in the blade
of the flash
of a grenade.
Levelling the field,
new growth comes into play.
Shift the aura
of the landscape.
Fold in the batter.
Melt the butter to a thin film.

In first person,
rememberances of war
become idealized,
steeped and stained
in the tannins of sentiment.
Tea leaf sediment,
left to dry, spells the future
in the letters of the past.
Which came first,
the wheel or the avalanche?

© 2011 N. Chaplin
All Rights Reserved