Friday, July 26, 2013

The Helpless God


Black skies at noon
Slice through office blocks.
Up a forgotten passage
In a quiet doorway
A resting god
Opens its eyes
And follows the smog
To the edge of the last light
As the city is stoppered
With an ice black cork.

The god is tired of new lives –
It just wants this one
Plastic ruby eyes
Rimmed with gold leaf
Decide to halt
The descending wrath.

A man disturbs the god
As a tube light flickers on
A client has arrived
To buy space for Commerce One
The god shuts its eyes –
Arrested by the presence of a man
Rules oblige it to act
Only when it cannot be seen.

The wet cold plug expands
Sealing the city shut
Twenty million mouths turn blue
As a suffocated civilization ends.


Centuries later, steel drills at noon
Shatter through office blocks.
An expedition for oil strikes rich -
Thick fountains of chilled blood
Pirouette in the white, sun bleached sky.
Up a forgotten passage
In a quiet doorway
A resting god
Opens its eyes
And follows the whirling blades
To the edge of the red light.




A version of this poem (‘The Resting God’) appeared in Towers of Silence  (A limited edition chapbook , published by Aark Arts).

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