Millennium: Song of a New Year

 

Tonight, the moon is divided—half loss, half hope

An hourglass or a clear luminosity diving through light-flecked clouds

Low and golden, the way long-ago fish broke into the air

the sky is restless tonight, like a sea mourning waves tossed carelessly

on an abandoned shore of tumbled shells and scuttled ships

 

Behind me, the hills are somber milestones

my car is a ghost rushing past gas pumps, cantinas and fast-food grottos

past gluttonous palaces and stoic churches, past neon signs that barter lust

the world is intoxicated, mad with its own reflection,

As slot machines echo divinity and release a cascade of tiny moons

pressed with the faces of forgotten heroes

 

The world is senile, filled to the gullet with sentiment and butchered flesh

and the promise of more trinkets—Love has become anonymous

an apocalyptic lullaby, a keepsake from a mythical land

the radio sings and hisses and cajoles and like an interpreter of Pythian verse

I’m listening for my redemption, listening hard, the way a leper clings to hope

 

Even children are sinister now

their delicate lips and reflective eyes wizened, measuring the cost of things

the land suckles seducers who unwind desire like silver thread through a forest

leading the unwary to a mystery—where aerialist’s caper

their tiny umbrellas incapable of breaking any fall

and rodeo clowns eerily mock death

 

A thousand voices drone like bees in lazy sunlight

so many wings and claws and sensual, black eyes

time cuts away the useless flesh to play a harmony of bones

nothing exists except us— the room is empty

Cards crack beneath old fingers, changes are stirring there, like clouds threatening rain

let it sting, let it be cold and awakening, let it bind us

 

Tonight, the centuries whisper our names, syllables twined the way serpents mate

we are a hollow wind, a page torn from a book, an empty promise of immortality

God blossoms in your eyes—there in a garden of fear and remorse

and terrible beauty where the secrets of love and death are kept

your heart is burning into cinders— and in that heat we are born

 

© amy eyrie 2013