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Poetry by
Michael
January 13, 1998 |
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The Last Prophet |
In the city,
twisted metal buildings struggle,
straining their damp black mass
into the murky sky:
the swirling soup of hell raised high.
In the city,
the cogs of millennia turn.
Deep in the bowls of the earth
their grinding rises forth,
a low beast's roar amongst
the sharp roots of the city's straining towers:
the twisting streets that adorn their feet.
Inexorable shadows,
unconscious and conceited,
sup upon the last soul.
He raves in the street
shouting for more,
a behemoth drowning in a tide of hobgoblins.
At this last precipice
-- his fate inevitable --
blind defiance adorns his grave.
He is devoured,
the last soul consumed.
And the happy store shoppers
seep a sickly, rotten blood
from eyes set in faces long infested,
happy to bide every desire of the speaker in the ceiling.
The gutters are abundant this night;
There is an unborn child
ripped from the womb,
a little red body floating in the torrent:
blood from Oedipus' eyes.
He has a painted face,
a sad mime's grimace,
a shattered mask to hide his eyes.
(Mother Mary opted for abortion.)
The gutters run deep
with filth and muck spat forth
from thousands of mawking mouths,
with the festering fluid
from thousands of well-mocked wounds.
Televisions glare out store windows at him.
The sky brings forth an assault
with tears of an ineffable sludge.
A thick slick of oil pastes his face,
splattering on the cracked mask.
And the happy store shoppers
seep a sickly, rotten blood
from eyes set in faces long infested,
happy to bide every desire of the speaker in the ceiling.
The prophet has fallen unheard.
No star shines upon this Bethlehem.
The world has spurned their god,
and the sky begins its slow descent.
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