***

“Iconoclasm”

Old gods.
Their brittle splintering bones
litter the unhallowed brine of this beach.
Glaring fossils, they shriek toward the sky. Defiant.
Bewildered at dying.

I see the gods driven from the flaming groves,
and I hear the oracle scream and strangle on prophesy.
I know that it is never enough,
fleeing to the edge of land;
the loss of faith demands an extinction.

The waves are eternal, relentless, indifferent.
The vines of Bacchus wither, writhe dying,
in the keen saline sting.
The maenads drop dancing,
shrink bleached on the sand,
astonished forever to die by the sea.

It is only old lovers calling drunk in the night,
voices shaking,
desperate in parodies of old arrogances,
that move me as the tides are moved
to scour imperviously these discarded gods,
turning tawdry flesh to the pale perfection of bone.

The slow dissolve of calcium,
icons into sand and salt.
Is there grace for the old gods?
Blanched fragile and white and endlessly baffled,
they howl in resistance, fading away.

Smooches back at, ya, love.

Sometimes life’s better and happier off the internet. I hope yours is.