After the Flood
Certainly there were changes,
big ones; such as? Such as the
following anti-verdurous stunts;
the onset of ancestors marching
free again of our own beautiful shapes, and
the bellyache of Gods drawing shut their
own personal skies like blinds;
but the priests though remained,
scaling heaven, tactically, as if
it were a mountain; and if there
were resurrections, it was one every month,
scientists using simulators and cages
to mimic the upward trajectory
of the corpse; while the infinite
birth of new shadows marched,
expectant, towards no new sun;
with a clump of forsaken flesh in each fist,
where the thoughts of no death lie,
the saved they watched their
torsos depart the final bony-rail;
while the atheists said what
they had to say,
faiths were secured, bibles written,
though the DNA of Christ’s blood
failed, quite naturally to match
the blood of all men; unholy and
heretical, philosophers queue-
jumped humanity and the religious
for quick and illiterate answers …
and the new consciousness arrived,
mingling itself among human heads
like an almost untraceable breeze
among dandelions; and worse, worms
underground, no longer recognized
our skulls, neither their texture or their
shape, so moved past them, before that is,
God had time to shed from his body
our most human and identical skin;
– So now man then, fear the worst,
while this world
it drags on, rotates, and angels they
cling onto our always withdrawing wrists –
And as the one last species gasps
Its last, and the clouds like paper-bags implode,
our soothsayers they get it wrong
again; for the world it would look
different if we were to forever hold our breath;
and so if we are finally to nail things down here,
well then, no, death, that final
disease, it can have no remission.
And so, both arthropod and mammal
Waiting here
For your own particular bones to recede, turn
away now from your every muscle, joint; turn
instead to your own icon embedded
there in the mud, to see what your
own last look will be, to see what
final ailment will set us all free;
And if each nebula has been listed, and every
clock set, then there can be no cause for alarm,
no theory behind which to hide,
for now, look! Like our fingers,
trees are trembling, the ark’s last
rusted tin-pail has been ditched,
and neither the future nor the past nor the
present can return us now to ourselves.
Page(s) 48-50
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