Haiku challenge: Forest & Whisper

I was about to post this on Monday morning when we lost the Internet. Posting now in a brief window of connectivity…

A tanka for Ronovan’s weekly challenge.

 

tree silence

is the forest’s breath

birdsong its call

we listen and learn our

voices no more than whispers

Toxic garden

Rising to Ronovan’s challenge to write a poem based on The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych by Heironymous Bosch.

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They were not so naïve in those days of mass misery and oppression, when grotesques crouched in every doorway, and famine lurked at every winter’s end. Not so naïve as to believe in Heaven without Hell, master without slave, and the divine right of mad despots without the servitude of the poor.

Even then, the world was a teeming mess of futility, navel-gazing and lotus-eating. Paradise is solitude, the quiet of nature. The end, coming soon, to screens all around the world, is Hell and the final madness. So sophisticated and worldly-wise, are we, yet we will fall into the same pit of screaming darkness as the leprous villeins who feared the incubi and succubi of their dreams and that the sky might fall upon their heads.

Scream to the sky

the rich and powerful

are not listening