The tentacles of darkness stretch across the land,
but it is not night that is at hand.

Slowly, but surely the darkness wins,
across dead soil with no winds.

Then the dark changes before my eyes,
to something unworldly - the ancients had cried.

Plato, Gutenberg, Hercules, and Wolf may be red,
but it is not these I mourn as dead.

I shiver and shake while the world slumbers,
but it is they who miss the wonder.

Only 8 tetrads to occur in the century 21,
so I don't know if I will see another one.

No Facebook, Instagram, or headline news,
can compare to seeing my muse.

Only my eyes see it from this spot on Earth,
only my brain will remember the moon's rebirth.

From light to dark to blood and back,
it is something to remember when I fade to black.

The limbs of light fight back the dark across the land,
but it is not day that is at hand.

May 7 2022

wrap me up in a compendium
swaddle me
in a hundred volume tome
of copperplate script
and loose leaf scritta paper
printed type mixed with beetle ink-
like a pre-reformation
family heirloom bible.
or like the scriptures
which are chiseled
criss cross
upside down
and sideways
all along the catacomb walls
sprawling outward under Rome
in confused radial non patterns
of hexagonal fractals covered in symbols of heresy…
or a quarried sandstone
honeycomb
subterranean spirit secrets
hidden under symbols scribed by martyred
2nd century Christians,
swimming with the anchor and the cross
with the Jesus fish and all the rotas squares.

a city full of crucifixes and brass bulls
is buzzing and burning up above.
chain my bones against a Wailing Wall
with my mouth taped shut around an
Aztec whistle
or at the very least
a wooden reed.
noonday Yiddish hymnals
are all row row rowing
merrily
down my ear canals
in a boat full of
Ambrosian rites
Gallican liturgies
hot menorah oil
frankincense
and the Vatican’s signal of the black smoke
still waiting on the new Bishop of Rome

galvanized lunar tetrads
waxing at the apogee
casting shadows so wide
the sun grew long forgotten in my mind
like a song not quite remembered
sung in the valley of the shadow of the Iron Age
or the present dusk of the Piecean Era
when all the Jesus fish
in the Coi pond
of the neighbors yard
were swallowed whole
by a blue heron.  
luckily every dusk soon gives way to dawn
and the high noon of the Aquarian winter
couldn't come soon enough
like the fumata bianca
a water bearer is like a living miracle
in the eyes of a dry and dusty scarecrow
and it is given us
to bring about the end of time
for it is time alone that winds on wearily
and the earth is parched
and very tired now.

bundle me up in an
ancient Kemetic lexicon
a hundred gallon vessel
of holy water couldn’t quench my thirst for
dark matter
and starlight
I used to return from the ocean with a thimble full of salt water
but it is given us to be the Saviors of the world
so now I drive to the beach in a dump truck
big enough for an open pit anthracite coal mine
reciting one quite heart-prayer
at a time,
squeezing all the holy drops
from the salt
and the barnacles
and the brine.

©️  Jordan Gee