Fire Flood Blood Or Ice
Fire flood blood or ice.
The watchers are growing nervous.
The prophets are losing their voices.
The poets caw like a farce of crows
from the autumnal branches
of a scarecrow's skeleton
as the grasslands overrun the trees of life
who dream in their fossilized heartwood
under Arctic eyelids of perpetual night
awakening slowly to the nightmare of global warming
without a hope in hell
of another cosmic ape
to stop swinging his weight around like a funeral bell
and learn to walk upright like the lighthouse of a false alarm
that came too late to avoid the storm.
The gods are asking the ants for advice.
Everyone's wearing the mask of someone else
like the upgraded face
of a mineralized avatar into virtual reality.
The alarm clock poses as an air raid siren.
The Hubble Telescope gets busted
for distributing kiddie porn
like baby pictures of the naked universe
on the third eye of its hard drive.
There are gules of starmud
running down the candles of a black mass
like the keyholes of weeping madonnas
down on their knees
begging mercy from their tormentors
for denying them a virgin birth.
Cartels of gargoyles have pulled off
a coup d'etat of sunglasses
and posted guards on the cornices of a church
that serves black kool aid to the faithful
that smacks of licorice burning tires and oil spills.
Bodies banked like driftwood
on the concrete shores of their homelessness.
Postures of agony in the ashen Pompey
of our inner cities
modelled by Vesuvius
getting ready for the big day
they'll be unveiled in an art museum
as part of a month long retrospective
on the geniuses of desecration
that have demonized our clay
by giving vent to their volcanic rage
like a haemorrhage of inspiration
that amputated the arms
of the experimental children of Auschwitz
and grafted them like the hands of a clock to their backs
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
