One Prose Poem by Townes-Thomas

 

The mystic in the fens

These destroyed fenlands housed in their hatred a mystic, as though for a moment they’d forgotten to hate, even as hate was their water and bread, and their hatreds colluded among other angers. She emerged in the days when the sky turned bloody, she would bend in the wind and sing to the birds, and chase hate from a raging heart, and leave you lonely out on the fen. Suddenly timid, you’d remember the kitchen and tears would bubble; the mystic has schemes. She could place you on a fen or an Anglian bluff, make a hole in your chest for the innocent reeds, settle night in you like a fearful town. But your hate is strong, and you have your own schemes: the granite walls are rational, the games are chaotic. You spit, proclaim your keep and inheritance, live in the bloody maw of the end. Never hearing the song in the fenland winds. Denying the mystic speaks your name.

Townes-Thomas lives a quiet life in London, England. He spends his time struggling to make sense of the things he reads and the world in general. His poems are available in Shoreline of Infinity, Scifaikuest, and Graphic Violence Lit.