The Stag and the Stones- a Poem

I seem to be on a bit of a poetry roll right now! So, here's my next one.

The Stag and the Stones
by Ben Emlyn-Jones
 
I am a white stag and I am angry. I don't want to be, but I am.
I hate to hate and I love to love.
I just want to be left alone, to live my life and love others, love my surroundings.
Love my life.
Why is that too much to ask?
Who are you? Why are you here in my world?
What have I ever done wrong to you that makes you want to do me so much harm?
I am lost in a strange world and strange in a lost world.
I just want to help others.
I once showed four children how to return home. No, that wasn't just a story!
I've finally reached people. I trot down the street.
The woman with flat greasy hair. Exhaustion saturates her body and brain.
She stacks the shelves in Poundland for her Job Seekers Allowance. But then she sees me.
She stands up straight. Her chains crack and disintegrate. Her faces lights up and she laughs.
The solitary old lady who has spoken to nobody in a week throws away her Zimmer and dances with me.
Small children in a school looking down at their books. Their joy beaten out of them by mental horsewhips.
They see me and whoop. The teacher shouts pathetically as they rush out to walk with me.
It is the subversion of stopping work to watch the sunset.
The Darkness is angry and afraid. A white van cuts in front of me, blue lights flashing like a lighthouse from hell.
The uniformed biots of the Darkness line up, their minds blank with professional catalepsy. They have the eyes of a corpse.
There is a muzzle flash. Smoke billows like phosgene.
My body goes numb before I can feel the bullet inside me. My nose hits the ground. Blood covers my vision.
 
Yet I still live. My death was only a temporary state.
I may look like a man now, but I am still the white stag.
I feel hatred. I can't help it.
If I couldn't feel hate then I would be incapable of loving.
I know what to do. My entire human life has had one purpose, to give me the knowledge for this moment.
I planted mines in Iraq and charges in derelict skyscrapers.
The Darkness celebrates the killing of the white stag in stone.
The memorial to the slaughter stands in a field like the toy bricks of a spoilt child.
It is a flower of necrosis.
The five hundred million allowed to live, pull their lips into a Stepford smile.
Their filleted brains crackle with chemical stimulation.
They cheer like drunkards over the body of the white stag.
My friend and I look like mice on the CCTV as we scurry across the field. Beware our squeaks! Judge us not by our size. We fell elephants.
Our silver sedan jerks across the screen, frame by frame.
Shaped RDX with a sixty second fuse. It does what it says on the tin.
The floodlight flickers with piezoelectric insult. The spray of fragments cascades across the grass. Granite vapour flows over the carpark like twilight mist.
The backhoe rumbles and the capstone falls. It hits the ground with a fat, round thud.
It is a nourishing sound.
The other panels lean over. They pause for a moment as if fighting for life. They split with a crack and lie there, safe.
The time capsule is gone because you have no future.
The GBI are looking for us. Who cares if they find us or not?
I can hear the Darkness screaming in agony. Nothing else matters.
 
Now I no longer resemble a man; I am myself.
I jump out of the bushes and gallop into Bootle. My antlers reach up to the stars and the sun.
The people are still there; the woman, the old lady, the schoolchildren.
They don't speak, but deep inside they roar like lions.
I bellow in reply.
The Darkness is gone. In the end, it was just a paper doll with an iron mask.
The Age of the Stones is over.
The Age of the White Stag is about to begin.

Reading Station- a Poem

 I have written a poem, my first in over a decade. As you know, I am primarily a prose writer and poetry does not come naturally to me; however, the idea for a poem popped into my head a couple of days ago, and it stayed there. As a result, I decided the best course of action was to write it.
 

Reading Station
by Ben Emlyn-Jones
 
I buy my ticket. An off-peak single to Normality, standard class of course.
Jacob's Escalators boost me to the concourse.
Carotene timetables scroll like a waterfall.
The blazing sun is filtered through frosted safety glass.
The corrugated steel carapace above relays the heat.
The ski jump roof longs for snow.
Schwab's children surround me, socially distancing by a million light-years.
Their shuffling feet scuff on the baking sauna stones of platform 9.
"Yes, we own nothing and we definitely are happy!" Pod dwellers. Bug eaters.
They hold their mobile phones like prayer books, staring into the abyss of the display.
Trains. Conveyors of human cargo. They glide in and out like spoilt debutantes. Sliding along the steel contrails without engines or brakes.
No pistons or whistles, no romance. They just warble like tropical birds as they accelerate.
Sliding doors decant the herd like cheese wire. People flow in and out like pools of oil.
 
I am alone.
I turn my head to the right. She is gone.
I can no longer feel that warm soft pebble beside me, that used to nourish and comfort me.
Right now I'd give anything to hear her laugh again, to smile at me, to brush my hand with hers, to speak to me gently.
She used to run her hands through her hair. Her skin was so soft and pale.
I miss her.
I have arrived from another world. Nobody can see how alien I am, but I can feel it. Talking to me would reveal my strangeness, but without a moment of understanding.
I could never describe the place I have come from.
 
I walk into WH Smith.
Newspaper headlines shriek from stands. We should be scared of the sun.
There is no summer or winter anymore, just heatwaves and superstorms.
My train arrives and I board.
The cabin smells of soap. The seats prickle where my skin is sweating.
Oxford is so close that I'm on a moveable bridge.
I yearn to flee. I can't face what I always have faced.
But then I look down and smile.
My ticket is actually a return.