I. Neptune’s Theater


A rock spins through the universal tumbler

and its warm blue pools calcify

as turquoise Neptune in his cloudy blue bath bath

builds a lace castle with his fingertips


Sculpts a submerged eden of crimson and emerald

where painted parrots chat up cardinals

butterfly and angel fry sway with wave pulse

and foliated coral fingers beckon from arched windows.


Neptune’s children are flat and bright, spined and notched

free yet entangled in lace mesh ecosystem

beneath an array of bioluminescent stars

as a gangly pretender watches and blows bubbles.




II. Sapien Siege


The hot acidic hand of death grasps

the mesh rends and tangles

the ecosystem shattered

reef’s loosed children scream beneath planet’s stars.


Butterflies impaled

cyanide-swooning damsels

mesh-tangled angels hauled heavenward

coral to potash, corpses to coal.


The pretender to the throne blinks

rubs blurry lenses,

kicks plastic fins

and moves on to the next show


Unseeing and unaware

of the luminous filament in his wake.

Self-appointed divinity,

deus ex machina.

*****************­************

Ann says: All of the animal and human characters in this poem (except Neptune and The Pretender) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation. Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine.”

Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.

**** sapien*
fluid secretion from fountains
   under
      my
         tongue
escape when I talk
fumble over words
pool in the cup
by my bottom teeth
   lower lip ****

and when I spit
all
of my secrets
    those I promised
desertification occurs

i am rock
   knock with bone
dry
come and pick me, cotton picker
the seeds of my ignorant youth
   will
      stab
         at the
            hands
   slaver is hurt

saliva

The thing about fingerprints is not that, right now, there are seven billion different unique fingerprints on seven billion different people.
It is not that in all of human history no one finger print has been repeated, making, if my math is right, which it's not, twenty trillion individual fingerprints.
Nor is it even that none of the quadrillions of people that will come after me will have my exact finger print.
No, the thing about fingerprints is that they are utterly useless
Which is to say they serve no practical purpose in the survival of the **** Sapien.
That's a lot of effort to put into something that is pointless

2.
If we were created in God's image, then God was a man and
I imagine he took Sunday off and came back to work on Monday like the rest of us.
So maybe fingerprints haven't been forever.
Like with snowflakes maybe God's just doing some interior decorating lately.

Or maybe Saint Peter was kicking it with God in the break room at heaven and was like, "Dude...we need a new system, too many people are dying and I can't keep looking up everyone's deeds by hand; it's taking too long."
And in a moment of genius He was all, "I got this bro" and invented the fingerprint
Then went down to Best Buy and got one of those scanner things for the pearly gates and now when you die you just scan your finger and it auto-populates your deeds and if you get in it's all awmmmm and the gates open,
And if you don't get in it's all whup whum and you fall through a hole in a cloud in the sky and land in a fiery pit of hell.

(My parents stopped making me go to church in 2nd grade so my visions of heaven and hell are colored in crayon.)

3.
I wonder if the image of God sitting at a desk with a protractor, compass, drafting pencils, and tracing paper designing each individual finger print all day long comforts you?

4.
Maybe we're some Alien sociology major's thesis and our fingerprints are our unique identifiers for tracking and data collection purposes

5.
When I started this poem I thought maybe fingerprints are keys.
As in someone out there has the fingerprint that unlocks me.
But I've loved more than once
Hurt more than twice
And had a lot more *** than that
So unless this key unlocks something I've never heard of my lock's broken and I need to know who to call about that.
But I don't like to think of myself as broken anymore.

6.
Maybe when God's little helpers are making us they slice off a sheet of skin from the butcher roll, spread it out flat sticky side up on the stainless steel slab.
Grab a set of bones off the shelf lay them down and like canvas around a frame stretch the skin tight around our skeleton.
Starting from toes, to the knee, over the shoulder, around those pesky elbows
Until they tie us off at the finger tips with twine, cut the excess with sheep sheers, let it heal.
Fingerprints.
Our our little "Heche en el cielo"

7.
When I fall in love for the last time, I will dip my finger in red paint.
I will roll my finger across the bare chest of my love and she will wear it there
Like a tattoo no one else could give her.

8.
Maybe there is no point to fingerprints
Like arpeggios before a concerto
Maybe God was just warming up

9.
Maybe fingerprints are the point to everything

10.
Maybe an omnipresent God is at every birth
In every bedroom, hospital, and taxi cab
In every town, in every city, in every country in the world.

Maybe every time a baby is born
God, takes the time to name it
Then writes it down
In a language only He understands

Lights off,
doors locked,
windows shut,
blocked off.
No sound,
no sight,
no love,
no light.
Sparks fly,
don't ignite,
separation,
blank life.
Years gone,
love lost,
never hurt,
at what cost?

A wet machine encased in skin,
Eating, Pooping, Sleeping all day long.
I meant to describe my baby,
But am I any different?

anger unabated
as sinful "humanity"
sows
karmic seeds
of self destruction
the future
visceral
in the present