An Industrial Opera: Prologue / Epilogue

The end of the world as I hope it will be: nuanced, romantic and full of drear tragedy; mechanical and rusty, like failed clockwork.

Prologue

As I cusped your oxidized hand in mine
a quicksilver teardrop escaped from your eye
in a moment of clarity we looked to the sky
the bleak, harrowed mist of the industrial sky
the titanium gravestones blocking out the red sky
As ghosts climbed the tenements, corpses to die
they brought us their music, their last battle cry
thus ignites the rebellion, the first infant strides
of a desperate adventure, a river-bound dive
through depths of betrayal and chasms of time
to douse vitriol unto mens' hearts and minds
to raze the new order in opaque formaldehyde
to scythe the oppression against you and I
two romantics of plot with a mind to defy
'till the collective elements of society's bind
(old values decayed, new bales to abide)
veiled in the earth will incur our good-bye
'till bombast at dusk, 'neath vesper's paled light
when we vanquish our comfort for suicide
against the expanse of a metallic skyline

Epilogue

Encircle the forge, you frayed, barbaric toddlers,
suffocate the embers of Android Queen's jagged tumult!
Plaster yourselves in frankincense, myrrh, and myth
and strew your gold into the elegiac alkaline river,
shawl to the skeletons of an ancient movement, to rebels
of corrosive life corroding into disharmony, a silver mist.
And as you gaze upon these waters of rusty, seared candor,
portraits of the last adventure we'd share as mortal souls,
be keen to the chants and boleros arising from the desert floor.
They bleed the tales of downfall, a smother'd poet's long lorn lore
A lasting, raw chord

Author's Note

I hope, in a perfect universe, to elaborate between the two, adding an actual plot and progression of story. Who knows; maybe the epilogue will change completely.

Reviews

[Matthew D. Ford]

I really do like this. The consistency of the Prologue is great, and I love the feeling of romance between to lovers as they are about to die in an industrial world. It reminds me of 1984, yet a lot more peaceful. I assume you mean, in the Epilogue, that the start of the world, and Jesus, is a myth and to throw riches and wealth into a river, for they don't matter. Is that what you mean? Please explain. Excellent poem.

[Marie Harrison]

Amazing, your with with rhyme!