"potash" poems
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.
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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.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
Garden of Gethsemane, under your Mount of Olives,
The green-pitted translucence of night, where Christ,
Seer-in-knowing, writhes at the split seed of fission,
Break of night into the morning blossoms of Hiroshima’s ash,
Of mercurochrome and zinc oxides and the red snow of skin,
And his resurrection, forever once-again, in atomic flash,
The smells of honeysuckle and hay of manger,
And his breath of molten potash.
Nov 17, 2019
Nov 17, 2019 at 8:29 PM UTC
Mothers' Night
cascading
shards uneasy
echoes
falling
"It's our calling."
**** of Earth, hot spurts of words
savage knives
Abiding
Mothers, sacred and mundane
twist into harridan
cold stars
wailing, hurtling waves
Sad, old, crust of ages sliced,
******* carved up for profit
"It's not the color of the skin,
the culture of the smile"
the scent of danger,
the inborn stranger -- all excuses for
Us (superior) and Them (inferior)
"They are not like we;
but lower curs."
we may harm with unfettered glee
Cursed to be cut
to our requirement. Borders clear
"Here, fear fences in
our livelihood and wives."
Leave THEM to
putrid pits
cunning jabs, our pleasure.
Thus all treasure that might
regale, heal, reveal true worth,
of man and Earth
sold for pittance of potash
to dance a weary jig
May 12, 2010
May 12, 2010 at 6:58 PM UTC
lost ardor, long hidden beneath these initial wastes
pinpointing the mines and matters, estimations and worth
your excavation operating on the surface of my bereavement
without any evaluation of its dolorous costs or the extent
of these ductile veins, rivers through our subterranean natures
your shadow requirements, eroded and befouled
now, neither my eyes nor I much love your dark
epicardial secrets, projecting deposits of debris, the chloride fragrance
of our secrets, hidden fires underground; your love, all and away
digging, mining proposed new lovers out of us both; gravels and
pain and gas; ferrous exploration; uranium reclamation anew via
caustic layers of ore and deposits of once-flowing love
alloys of dead flowers and waste form my rocks
seething into scabrous life like bantling cacti after a lover has risen
such risks always require a proportion of love be livid, recoverable;
threads of passion dissolved in the complexities of the body
grains of unconsolidated minerals evoking love and potash
yes, secret metallurgists like you pose acidic dangers
to my soft endocardial things
Jun 23, 2019
Jun 23, 2019 at 12:59 PM UTC