A reimagining of this poem from Sadje – written for dVerse MTB – cherita
How The River Runs – 11th August 2025
Month: August 2025
—
Fill This Space – 10th August 2025
The hole in this room is getting bigger
as your withering whittles away at you;
The hole in our hearts gets bigger
as you shed your final skins;
The hole fills with yet more space,
even the perfumes are blown away with the wind;
The hole may be all that’s left to hold on to
after the burying of bones;
There’s a hole in our memories
where none had ever been needed;
The hole keeps growing to fill the space
until it is born anew.
Watching the end of lives can be crushing.
Schulweg – 9th August 2025
seit dem kindergarten
unser alltag
gemeinsamer
kopf voller träume
offen
zum lernen
hand in hand
wir verlassen
den platz
und tragen unsere zukunft
in unseren herzen
gebildet
An up-and-down cherita for dVerse’s MTB and inspired by the attached picture. I used Google Translate to arrive at the German. I have no idea how poetic it might sound in that language – any tips appreciated. Here’s the original English write:
since kindergarten
our routine
together
head full of dreams
open
to learning
hand in hand
leaving
the square
carrying the future
in our hearts
educated
Are You Ready? – 8th August 2025
Between a rock and a hard place
I cut off my arm to be free
Stumbling home for many hours
Surviving by drinking my own pee*
I lost an arm and a leg that day
At the races or falling down stairs
A one-ton anvil fell from the sky
And my wife had many affairs
At any moment, a plane may hit
Or a drop bear will drop on me
Mentally trained and prepared for it
I’m as calm as calm can be
Practising negative visualisation
*The story of Aron Ralston
Selective Interest – 7th August 2025
still
attentive
resistant
~ as the utter chaos whirls around me ~
I will attend to
only that to which
I agree
in
stillness
Inspired by Jenny Odell, from How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Cathedrals – 6th August 2025
There are cathedrals everywhere,
for those with the eyes to see;*
between appearance and purpose
is the practice of how to be;
Beauty is not made of magic,
it’s a functional affair,
for those with eyes to see
there are cathedrals everywhere.
*quoted from David Elikwu
The Spell – 5th August 2025
The masks removed in the morning,
my demon transferred to her;
Ignoring past mistakes’ warning;
last night remains a blur.
Inspired by this imagined conversation between Descartes and Hume at Existential Comics
An Explanation – 4th August 2025
the urge is rising to complain
filling you with negative charges
the horizon always looks like rain
and the urge is rising to complain
the victim appears to explain
the circle of madness enlarges
the urge is rising to complain
filling you with negative charges
A triolet inspired by this Eckhart Tolle quote:
See if you can catch yourself complaining in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself a victim. Leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.
The Rusty Nail – 3rd August 2025
Tired and twisted, only its home did fail,
the rusty nail
remained on the mound of the fire’s ash;
the young monk swept it up to put it in the trash.
Bhagavan stayed the monk
and questioned him, if all he held was junk?
Picking out the nail, rusty and bent,
the monk asked Bhagavan what he meant.
‘We have a pile of nails, brand new,
all clean and true.’
The monk confused
as Bhagavan responded that everything useful should be used.
‘Clean the nail and make it straight;
Pick up the mustard seed that fell off the plate;
A life led living in excess
does not gift the world with success.
Written (later) for the GloPoWriMo Day 9 prompt:
try writing a poem that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths.
Inspired by this story from Sri Maharshi
Working For The Man – 2nd August 2025
I chuckled at the wiry youth
Secreting products from the shelves
Under his coat, down his pants
“Don’t be too obvious!” I said
And let him be on his way
All those hours sat a desk,
The dreaded corporate cubicle,
Surfing the net on big business dime
Planning a future for myself
Fuck ’em if they’re this inefficient
And so when the falling down stood up
To burn the factory to the ground
Fists were raised in a tragic solidarity
We stuck it to the man, at least
Until we had to go back to work
Inspired by thoughts after reading Work Poem by Miro in Issue 7 of Suburban Witchcraft which brought to mind these lyrics from Laws Against Laughing by The Crucifucks…
Some really good friends of mine
They blew up a factory
No one really knows how it happened
And they are still running free
And I think it’s funny…
…and leading to memories of a couple of my jobs.
The first stanza happened when I was working at a popular supermarket in Sydney. The job I enjoyed but I hated the manager so much that I just didn’t care about people stealing stuff.
The second stanza details my corporate years where ideas for improvement were always rejected because no one could be found to pay for them. This meant about five years of maintaining a functioning system and starting up a secondary business as a hobby while there. Fuck ’em!
The third stanza imagines the idea of sympathy for the guy in Falling Down losing his mind and blowing up his place of work, followed by the realisation that we still need to go to work the next day to get our proverbial dollar.
1994ever 