2 Broken Love Songs in Retrograde

I sing the song backwards

from stone-scaled metal giants

to talking serpents:

I hold The Beginning in my

trembling mortality,

run my fingers through

Eve’s black hair,

check to see if Adam

has a bellybutton,

watch dinosaurs wrestle,

put my fingers in Christ’s

fresh Salvation scars,

hear Nero fiddle,

and watch the Kennedys fall,

smell witches burning,

and sleep away the ache

in mass graves,

I wear mountains into tar pits,

melt icebergs for a cool drink,

watch aliens and Egyptians

tag-team a pyramid,

fly on a Mayan Vimana

over a thawed polar ice cap,

I watch Saint Peter walk the waves,

then, watch DiVinci try it

in his wooden swan shoes.

I watch the world expand

and collapse on itself

many times over,

eat with Buddha,

fast with Ghandi,

dance with Zoroaster

under a blood red moon,

and, still,

I understand nothing.

 

then, likewise, I sing our song

in reverse,

from the eye twinkle

Life Spark,

to the warmth of

lips on lips,

the glorious purity

of mingling flesh,

sweet tangle of rebel hearts,

an Ice Age of hard words

and frozen over souls,

orgasmic Spring thaws,

tired Autumn molts,

sweet Summers of

sailing through a thousand

love poems sideways,

lying spent on the green

dewy grass,

discussing Hank III lyrics

over cheap whiskey

and expensive weed,

then, a slideshow

of Judas betrayals:

a verbal nuke,

emotional fallout,

hunting the Lion,

slaughtering the Lamb,

annihilation,

darkness;

falling, falling, falling

like D.B. Cooper,

clinging to my only treasure,

knowing the doom

of impact is vrooming

toward me at the speed

of newborn pain.

 

the results are the same;

always the damn same:

I sit in the rubble of the shattered

temple I used to be,

singing and crying out decades

of passion and madness

like a drunken shaman,

bleeding steadily,

learning nothing,

earning nothing,

 

slowly, slowly, slowly

becoming

nothing.

all alone.

Reviews

[Nautili]

this is an amazing write. I thought of King Solomon in all his wisdom, saying, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." It had a time flight feel, little vignettes of history with you there.. (like Wishbone...remember him?)
It was interesting, somber and a cool write. The ending of it speaks of our eventual deterioration into dirt....fitting in light of the whole tone to this piece.
sidenote: I have had a few Judas betrayals myself....could relate.

[Kenneth The Poet]

A lovely piece, R.G.

[roarke]

Time's fame is so fleeting, isn't it. We mortals can imagine eons, but to time they're mere seconds. I'm gonna need an oxygen back-up on this.

[Emily B]

oh