Is there still…?

Is there still time?
Is there still time to be human?

Everywhere,
every-fucking-where
this storm of separation, this vertigo,
this howling and this yelping, this moaning, this plea 
to end the pain,
this trumpet of the angel of death, of the angel of bleakness, 
this abandon to isolation, this anguish, this torment!

In every house,
in every home,
in every garden,
in every hallway,
in every painting or photograph suspended on a wall
that never protected anyone from anyone else –
this bleeding!

The eyes and the faces,
the trees and the boats and the potted plants,
the discolored fruit on the tables in picture frames – 
exploded, detonated, turning to ash:
singed snowflakes trickle to the ground in piles,
left and right.

Everything
every-fucking-thing
disintegrating into swarms of wingless butterflies,
blown up by this clashing of easterly and westerly gales,
blown away – 
not to fly,
but to fall.
And accumulate.
And cover the earth.
Like merciless hail the size of balled fists, 
like rot and like locusts,
this earth where our lives used to grow
all fresh and immediate and full-bodied and zesty…
And fragile.

And all the poets now sleepless or haunted.

Is there still space?
Is there still space to be human?
‘Here begins eternity,’ reads a big sign
above the entrance to the cemetery.
Here, where people turn into quiet bones,
or maybe up on a hill, in the middle of nowhere,
where violent indigo storms are brewing
amid endless fields of pure yellow grains,
and weak, so weak,
the fragrance of the lonesome linden.

Is there still…?

… money to be made and lives to be lost,
answers the echo.

And as we shore up empty spaces, 
and as we run into ourselves and disengage,
and as we move away from each other’s mess, each other’s weakness, and each other’s pain,
we miss each other, don’t we?