<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Keele Creative Writing Society]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://keelecreativewriting.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[oliverwhistleberry]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://keelecreativewriting.wordpress.com/author/oliverwhistleberry/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[While We Were&nbsp;(T)here]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><em> </em></p>
<p>A plaza full of people<br />
plentifully packed into a marquee<br />
marinated in condensation sensationally<br />
streaming downward.<br />
The breath, the very words spoken<br />
by all these miraculous people<br />
gushing, rushing and pushing<br />
down into the earth.</p>
<p>No longer can this space<br />
contain our sojourn,<br />
how could it?</p>
<p>The most punctual and profound<br />
discourse conceivable<br />
attempting to escape<br />
up, out, and down,<br />
constant and confident,<br />
curling out of the seamed cracks<br />
like a black-head popped.</p>
<p>The marquee merges with the<br />
sky and surrounding space,<br />
darkening like a shaky hand<br />
on a dimmer switch.<br />
A little then a lot, lost,<br />
the exquisite cold disemboguing,<br />
left only with the warming words<br />
running around us,<br />
floating, flying, diving, dancing,<br />
lots of dancing.</p>
<p>The ground begins to sag,<br />
resound vibrations rang,<br />
a discursive retaliation,<br />
impatiently waiting.<br />
Yet the earth&#8217;s retort<br />
falls short<br />
and murmurs curses upwards.</p>
<p>We sink down,<br />
our words and wordlessness now enough,<br />
our mind&#8217;s fruits sprout springs,<br />
a constant leak,<br />
lapidating the already dilapidated ground,<br />
it incapable of inferring<br />
the surrounding intelligence accurately.</p>
<p>No longer do we exist in human terms,<br />
we are less than human,<br />
but so much more,<br />
human form is bulky,<br />
heavy and inefficient.</p>
<p>I can hear everyone<br />
talking simultaneously,<br />
yet with perfect comprehension,<br />
reliable and undeniable.</p>
<p>The toe nails are the first to go,<br />
softening to wax<br />
sliding away ephemerally.</p>
<p>Whole feet and ankles<br />
merge and submerge<br />
with the earth,<br />
not lost but discarded,<br />
parted with.<br />
Why waste<br />
might, fight, life and limb<br />
when we can exist within,<br />
no longer expatriated,<br />
but one.</p>
<p>We&#8217;re down to our knees<br />
but not on our knees,<br />
jelly limbs deflate to soup skins<br />
sporadically shifting until<br />
limp and dissolving into<br />
the human conception of nothing.<br />
The infinite room left by<br />
human nothingness is filled with<br />
minds and hearts<br />
across plains<br />
of love, understanding, compassion, sympathy, integrity<br />
worlds apart.</p>
<p>An earthly cough ruptures the ground,<br />
erupting around<br />
in spews of smoking strips,<br />
reluctantly mutter emerges<br />
soon to flip, flap and flutter away.</p>
<p>It is this mutter that merges,<br />
merges like us,<br />
merges with us,<br />
it is us.</p>
<p>Only our heads remain,<br />
resting as empty vessels.<br />
I am alive, we all are,<br />
confidently thriving,<br />
as, and within one another.<br />
In the air, around the air,<br />
and the air itself,<br />
tactfully intact,<br />
we are the wall and the crack,<br />
the forward and back,<br />
the future and past.</p>
<p>We understand the human conception,<br />
complete with regret and reflection,<br />
indifference and imperfection,<br />
a wasted potential<br />
for the complete,<br />
the finished,<br />
the whole.</p>
<p>Humans are multifarious and multiplying,<br />
halving like bacteria in a petri-dish,<br />
fished out of oceans<br />
abused, deceived, dismissed, deceased,<br />
immaleable and lowing,<br />
incalculable and unknowing.</p>
<p>The human condition is wholly limited<br />
and uncomprehending.<br />
The realm of human experience<br />
is microscopic, remote<br />
and rapidly reducing.</p>
<p>As my old human form finds ephemerality,<br />
any reference to me becomes<br />
irrelevant and retreating,<br />
I am no longer an individual,<br />
I am no longer I.<br />
For I represents a mode of language<br />
and a mode of reference,<br />
it represents one and another,<br />
separate forms of consciousness,<br />
separate knowledge, entities.</p>
<p>Humans are lost<br />
and out of the loop,<br />
drooping,<br />
tongue-tied apparitions<br />
with senseless senses,<br />
restrictive and vindictive.</p>
<p>Receptacles of<br />
receptacles of<br />
receptacles.</p>
<p>Earth&#8217;s voice is no longer a<br />
buried murmur<br />
it is without sound or vibration,<br />
for we are one.<br />
The calcium in teeth<br />
the limestone in toothpaste,<br />
no waste, no choice, no free will, no will,<br />
incomprehensible comprehension<br />
simultaneously synonymous<br />
with everything all at once.</p>
<p>Perceptive and receptive,<br />
only consciousness remains,<br />
consciousness spanning<br />
centuries and solar systems.</p>
<p>Undistracted by the<br />
distinct stints of the human world&#8217;s<br />
attempts at suicide,<br />
with an existence consisting<br />
predominately of<br />
pompous monopolies,<br />
it is here and it is now<br />
I shall move on,<br />
but if you can<br />
I’d love for you to come along.</p>
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