I
Polaris we called it,
The guiding star
That enticed us to map the world;
Not a face, but a fire that launched
a thousand ships.
What wings we built we used at will
To launch higher than any bird
could dream of
And go higher still with eyes that orbit the edge of imagining.
Thousands of years spent in rocky dark with fear and spear alike
Transformed, unrecognizable,
the clock ticks our years away with the mechanical hands we gave it.
Time stretched transparent over us,
Knowing we would die tearing at death himself with metal teeth and ambrosia
for the sake of just one minute more:
And we were Gods;
Ancient and savage,
Invincible maybe.
II
Invincibility cannot last,
a lesson learned by frozen wonders, cracking into crystal shards that drift and drift and disappear.
Plumes of smoke rise where forests once thrived,
Armies felled in an instant to ash, and before the dust has settled
Tiny skulls are trampled underfoot by Big Plans.
White reefs lay as echo chambers,
Acres of empty homes and bursting graves,
A reminder of our power to give and take and take and take
Even colour itself is not safe.
How can we be Gods, if we were Gods at all?
Which have we discovered already within, and worshipped;
were we
Ares or Ouranous?
Dionysus drunk on wine laced with power,
we are titans,
With no prison left to put us in but the one we are creating for ourselves.
III
"Oh we were Gods" they'll cry "we were good"
But all kingdoms are built on bones, and ours will make a new foundation of wasted marrow and dust
Gods are made to be consumed,
Spat out half chewed and desperate, Cringing in the face of some new burning vision
"Good" we croak "we were good" choking at our cremation, bleeding out the ashes
To Ashes, we are always falling
back to the ground
And I have been waiting millenia for my place in the dirt,
The God and the Fly and the wanton Boy;
The unholy triptych that once resided beneath the lacewing of my skin
loosed at last on the world,
The rough beast slogged out of Bethlehem
In ink that lit fires and crumbled civilizations,
"Son of God" we called him, and made mother's of ourselves,
Wailing and shaken in the lonely stable, forgetting what it means to be savage,
What it means to be gods of nothing at all.
IV
Savagery takes courage,
That inconceivable fearlessness of generations gone by,
A will to live that seems just out of our reach,
Fluttering like pages in the breeze before the window closes,
And yet here we kneel,
In pools of blood deep enough to set ourselves adrift and never find the bottom,
nor resurface,
Acts of savagery pouring from our veins, the red mist of morning
on the eternal front,
Savages were chattel for the slaughter,
And we the pale faced executioner
In white hoods,
Spent years grinding savage away to something manageable and easily understood-
Even God's must make mistakes,
Yes we were ancient and savage,
On streets that used to know peace and nothing else,
Flaying them raw and asking why they dared scream
Fearing every tongue and every beat and every shadow,
Desperate to prove just how savage we could be.
V
They will find us some day,
In tombs long since forgotten by the world,
Concrete cracked and ivy winding across the words that have faded into dust,
And be revolted by the barbarism of our beliefs
They will tell of how we destroyed ourselves,
Ripping each other apart in the name of some imagined thing,
And they will wonder how we could do it,
Like it was nothing, like it was easy
We will be remembered as an example
Of the heinous past of a sparkling future;
While flowers will grow in no man's land
And our lives become artefacts of a bygone age
Still they will clear the rubble and start anew,
As all those who have come before have done,
And hope to do better than we did
When we were Gods;
Ancient and savage,
Invincible, maybe.