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The Skulls Speak (Intro)

And now your questions force us back to speech.
But do we speak our truth, or resonate to what you'd have us say?
Much is forgotten. Illusions stripped like flesh, desire
the word rings hollow. Desolate, we are all that can remain
amoral truth, unwelcomed, ripped out of obscurity.
Strangers to anticipation, prisoners of the present indicative.
The river carries rumours of a presence in the hills.
Fresh skulls bloom beneath their skin. Planted here,
history's chief crop, like tumours on the river bank

 

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Ghost fences #1
The general and his men…

if we stared out, slack jawed, at "history"
incapable witnesses time polishes to bone.
The space inside the skull echoes the river's susurration
wind in the canopy and the shifting light
splinter mosaics on the water's purling surface.
If this is language then you search out its grammar
poor victim of your own sophistication.
We cannot tell you anything.

Be patient as this polished bone and the cracked skull
will yield enlightenment? A belief absurd
as mountains dreaming acrobatics.
Insufferable conundrums? Eyes that searched beyond
seeing nothing: ears that strained for sounds
hearing nothing: no eyes, no tongue, no ears
still seeing, hearing, saying nothing.

Futile pilgrim, shuffling through the past
in search of meaning. We cannot teach you anything.
You deride our answers: we deny there was a lesson.
Inarticulate in life: our skulls are no less eloquent.

 

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Ghost Fences #2
(on the lake)

Conscripted to futility: seasonal witnesses to ownership
we stand guard for a while at the edges of the space
the tribe claims as its own. Obedient to directions
(how can the skulls debate their sanity?)
we outstare time: oblivious to absurdity.

If this landscape could be named, then call it loneliness:
a blunt reminder of your insignificance.
Three bands of colour. Above, the endless
empty blueness of the sky, bleached by the sun.
Between, the ragged stripe of forest green.
Below, the blue-grey lake. And you are nothing
more than windblown dots across its surface.

Behind us in the dark, the platforms wrapped in pungent smoke.
If we define a boundary: do we keep the terror out?
Or like the firelight create a place, familiar, near,
where children cry, old man tell stories.
and bodies writhe together in the corners of the hut?

slack at the edges, even underneath the moon, the landscape
darkens into distance. We stare: failed antidotes to primal fear:
that sense that everything can fade away, cannot be grasped
or being grasped cannot be held but crumbles, flows,
as permanent as patterns forming on the surface of the lake.
Stake out the skulls to claim this place as yours but
it will not notice when you disappear.

 

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The Skulls' last message

Remembering nothing: at least we proffer evidence
If you but had the skill to read its signs:
Your studies and your theories make you blind
The blade cut fades, the domed skulls fall.
We crumble, fading, fertilise the soil.
This needs no exegisis.

The words that echo in the brain pan blur
and fail, but one last thought, before the dust
reclaims us from the stage. Take narrative
as reproductive metaphor. Don't wince:
adapt our level unembarrassed stare and see
your role in life: ensure a fresh supply of skulls.

 

Copyright © Liam Guilar, 2004.