Clay Vessels

Tags

atheism, climate change, evolution, extinction, Gaia, gods, Nature, Poem, Poetry

The gods are long past forgiveness.
Stick-carved dust and water-colored walls
have ceased to amaze;
The smoked petitions and pitiful prayers have ceased to amuse.

The devils of dust and deluge,
here, there, sprout as spotted lesions,
a leprosy cancered over this plague of man.

Thunderstones fail the heavens
and the earth opens her bosom
to bear the heart beatings
of hate meted among peoples.

The hills reject and the valleys swallow
that remnant clinging for rescue
as reward for misdeeds
of desire, rights, and obligations.

When it is finished,
it matters not if any survive.
The gods are but the apathetic imaginings
of the pretenders
to the crowns of creation.

This universe,
having chanced life once,
will chance it again,
and again,
without us.

The Last Tear

Tags

Anarchism, atheism, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, freedom, letting go, mormons, Poem, Poetry, relationships, Religion, walkabout

1.

Distant love, half-continent,
fine-toothed possessions,
mostly thinned books sailing
a cardboard sea to desert.
The last wave by
from a bicycle parked
at a school, calling itself
FREE.

2.

Sometimes molasses, in comparison,
rages as waterfalls, imaginary
friend fading out of invisibility
until the formal proclamation
of not seeing everyone’s assumption.

That day, two unlikely Elders,
badges with plastic names
danced on my doorstep
for three-quarters,
being quizzed on their invisible friend.
Then, they disengaged
and left.

3.

Once, in a flash from a fifty-scarred
field of cornered blue,
I realized there were other friends
imagined, beneficial and judicial.
Vanquished from mind,
only flesh and bone of ideals
became my close circle
of lonely friends.

4.

Now, the universe opens to me,
new imaginings and impossible potentials,
a poem of freedom, walking in glory.
Happiness is to be mine.

Yet, should they come
with silhouetted gun
to remind me of chains,
to command obligation,
to magnify my burden,

the Titan will shrug,
shattering the silver goblet
of tears against the taming of fire.
All tears lost, save one,
one never dropped,
frozen at eye’s corner.
Waiting,
struggling,
trembling,

to let go.

(written for a prompt at DversePoets on the subject of letting go)

The Unblinkable

Tags

Anarchism, Apocalypse, atheism, Christmas, death, Ebenezer Scrooge, ghost, Poem, Poetry, Religion

It happens in a blink
of the eye and the train of lights,
red, white, green,
gone into the dark
of a new year.

It happens in a closing
of the eyes, into the overstuffed embrace
of a cardboard coffin,
the tree collapsing,
overburdened by gaiety,
broken and dismembered.

It happens in the blinding
of eyes, and the crinkling unrolling
of clear tape, binding the artificial
to past joys and sorrows, in hopes
for better tomorrows.

It happens in the settled
dust of darkness and forgotten crawlspaces,
encrypted with two malingering ghosts,
imparting metallic pallor
to the breath of believers,
while the third fails to show
for the funeral.