19.2.12

After Life

Legends of hell are typically
tragic: the child of the harvests
was abducted from Sicily,
from her mother’s own loam,
ate four seeds and was damned.
As for the underworld, one might
call it Hel, Hades, Mag Mell,
Abbadon, or Annwn: hell is hell.
Persephone, Queen of the Dead,
lies by Virgo; banished from dirt,
she has learned that damnation
is nameless, and discovers it
in the yawning of creation,
the expansive, tragic nature of stars.
Her serfs exist in the space between
the sun and its corona. The vacuum
collects souls and greets them
with the emptiness of sunbeams
and the heat of solar flares. The dead
and the gods breathe in the
plasmatic atmosphere of stars.

1 comment:

risingsympathy said...

Beneath nails and searing alcohol, under needles and pointed liquid, inside boiling spoons of froth and powder, shrouded by money and sheer desperation, lies a channel of thickening blood. Denser with crystals and lubricants and powders. Convert eyes to marbles and teeth to nacre and skin tonight. No longer breathing rasping, no longer sad empty, no longer worthy occupied concentrated enlightened free comp-

Sight never clears after the flower's power has struck. Lungs and synapses unforgiving. Hell lies within without.