Lord Applebee

From the beginning; Maize, to the end; Corn, we are but His crop
we are now the harvested

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

they aren’t the ones who didn’t make it yet, maybe they’ll make it a few seconds more, maybe they’ll feed upon the sparse wildlife, destroying hope for the next who might make it. 2-

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

they were fortunate, for there are ones who traverse alone. they live on the total end of the world and they continue to walk away from it, there is no sun, all that was quintessential was taken, all that was thought about was lost. 1-

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

they don’t remember, it is only the past and the future that exist anymore. 3-

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

the cold shouts of the winter wind only barely flutter the spiny manes of the stoic conifers. the travellers however aren’t as lucky, they are from and going to places nowhere near here, on a barely run path through barely lived villages 1-

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

, paths only crossed not by people but by train tracks. there is no place for passengers on the wandering trains, only coal and metal. to them, there always was nothing, there only is nothing, and there will be nothing. do they speak? do they laugh? do they cry? 2-

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...a neighbor passes by, “why do you stand there still, boy” he asks,
“if I move, I’ll be human again,” the child thinks at the neighbor, and the neighbor sighs and carries on.

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

“heavenward”, they shout, the fates, neglect their charge and charges gather round, strike the harvest, heat and boil the earth in weeping willow tears. A child stands among the reeds, adopted family brittle, cursed from wicked deeds...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...i don’t know is what they resolved to, and it was glorious and it was enough. and in that moment they felt nothing but everything at once, and the wind blew, and the boy left.

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...the tree and the boy stare at each other for what feels like an eternity, a good eternity at that, that for one night it wasn’t the most important night of their lives and no songs needed to be sung, and nobody needed to answer any questions...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...their homes will collapse, they will get sick, they will join the spirits. the oak tree cannot speak back to the young stable hand, nor does he know whether the flickering light of the human soul is better than the slow embers of the tree, it is the only thing he doesn’t...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...the trees don’t get thanked in the lonely coal stove, they are thanked by the singing and dancing of the townsfolk on a sweet summer’s day. the trees do not move, the hills do not change, these townsfolk know no constant like this...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...the toiling farmer will tell you that the hills became covered with trees because the earth needed a place to hide. but where do the trees hide, you might ask, they don’t, they must bear the heat until the rain comes again...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

when the sun becomes too hot to bear for the townsfolk they hide under the trees on the sloping hills. they can’t do much about the heat, all they can do is hide, and that is what they will do, and that is what the trees will provide...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...the coals will be used and the morning will return, but as the miners return to the bowels of the earth for the day, they wonder which of them will ne’er see their next.

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...for the miner provided the morning and the night, and he will return soon enough, when everyone is too old to remember him, and the watchful mother will remind her children to thank the sizzling furnace coals...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...and when they are ready, and they’ve seen enough of the heavens, the rain returns them to the earth. this is why the miners are laid in the funeral pyre once their soul has left their eyes, and as the stableboy watches the miners are not sad...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...it is the cyclicality that the coal miners wished they had as they spend their last days choking on their own dust. they hope that maybe when their lives end they fly to the sky in a blaze of majesty as the setting sun...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

it is legend amongst the coal miners that when it is raining during dawn the water washes away the eternal soot in the sky, and it runs through the hills to become coal once more...

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...the farmer would return home soon enough, tired, sure, and the dead returned home too, having made but one memory that wasn’t and will never be theirs.

[Lord Applebee @LordApplebee]

...and there he saw the gathering of the dead. he wasn’t scared, the dead he knew, could not see the living, they do not know if they celebrate while others are looking, they celebrate for themselves and those memories they loved...