Wilderness

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Brambles spike and barb his wizened hands,
he pushes forth, pressing leaf to trunk
clambering through thicket
and bush, snared by vines that sought
to keep him captive.

He grunts in irritation,
words no longer tools of expression,
his solitary prison acres of jungle,
no companion nor human to
indulge in social constructs.

The goal escape, the race eternal
he strides and cuts and slices
as weed and flower tumble to wayside
his determination steel,
foundation locked on retrieving existence.

“I know you’re up there” he suddenly
says, raspy voice, throat rusty
through non use, eyes thinned like
small pencil lines burrowed
in craggy sand.

“Stop it, I know you can hear me,” he
mutters aloud,
cursing some unknowable god figure,
an absentee watcher, spying on his
own creations.

“Cut it out!” he cries, standing amidst
foiliage denser than water,
ivy and leaf covering his body,
as a bony rough index jabs the very sky
with accusation and malice.

“Hey! Get over yourself” he shouts,
his…
“No! Stop narrating my life!”
he bellows, the sky sudd…
“HEY! I’M TALKING TO YOU!”

He stands silently, waiting for me
to respond in kind, but I continue
to type instead, unsure on how
to even start such a dialogue,
to reveal the truth.

“Easy. Say my name,” Trevor tells me.
“Not so hard, was it? Though
trying to be cute about it
just makes you look daft.
You finished?”

Yes.
“Good, now tell me why you left
me alone here, in this word jungle,
full of the unused ideas that you
just slipped to the wayside?”

I did not want you to get stale.
“Stale? I’m a human being!”
Well, technically, you’re a creation
of my weirdy mind and fingers,
and have you noticed how odd this is?

“Odd? Odd?! I’ve been locked with
plantlife for months!
My trousers are made of lilypads
and I’ve been using coconuts as pillows!
You could have written a nicer home!”

Yeah, that is my fault, sorry.
I slipped up. I forgot things, and that
as a pillar of invention, you
propped up the beginning of this
venture into pometry.

“So, can we get out of here, and can
I perchance bother you, to get
me back into my life, so
I can continue with whatever it is
that brain of yours cooks up?”

Trevor smiled as I typed more words,
the letters forming into ideas
and events, and paragraphs of movement
that flow and flit and lift, his body
shone and zap, leapt to a better world.