Young Gods

After a short ritual
We are young gods.

Confident and terrible
We rise to Inferno
To watch a farce.
The demons and the damned,
Laughing, trade places
Howling with glee
Because they know eternity
Ends too soon.

In a state of grace
We godlings, we urges,
Descend from Hell:
Wings tucked, spiraling,
We fall from garish flame
To cool, dark silence.

High in the tower,
Before a wall of windows,
Above the sleeping world
We reflect on light and shadow
And how abrupt
The simple transition between.
Someone has strung myriad lights,
Bright and dim,
moving and fixed,
And, hearing our wish,
Strobes brilliant pinpoints
Throughout our long watch.

The blazing, wailing Hell above
Has wrapped a poison creeper
Around our goddess’ heart
And thorny tendrils writhe
In chattering arrhythmia.
I dig deep into my bag
And bring out music-
An anchor in her storm,
A tempo to throb along to,
A path back to shadow.
She clings to the song
And soon fills the world
With the trills and moans of
Wind across the tower’s face.

Some of us dive like
Darting fish, tanks of time
Strapped to our wrists
And, when our duration runs out,
Float back to the tower
To replenish our seconds.
Some find morsels of coral,
Swords delaminating,
Calloused glass.

We tell each other tales
Of the treasures and wrecks
We've found, and each of us
Lures all of us down, and down,
And down to the deeps.

There we find a dim heaven
Of music and motion, and
A band of mischievous angels
In a frenzied dervish dance
Whirling to the wave music
Crashing far above.
One shout, we raise voice
In defiant heresy and dance,
One with our brothers and foes.
Dance ‘til our lungs burn.
Dance ‘til our feet blister.
Dance ‘til the waves
Wear away the drumhead of
The beach far above.
We climb back to the tower
And still the lights arc
And still the music of the wind
Across the tower’s face
Rings along the harpstrings of our nerves.

Periodically, a passing imp
Surrenders to a momentary impulse and
Possesses one or another of us
The rest of us giggle and
Snicker until the imps,
Bored quickly with the novelty
of puppetting apprentice gods,
Wander off with their
Stockpiled impulses,
Their bags of bad ideas.

Try as we might
To let go the godhead
And plunge to our pillows
And blankets of mortality,
Divinity has ideas of its own
And we bedspin through
Dawn and sunrise-
Gods at the end of eternity
Watching the last handful
Of worshippers wink out.