Ziplock Child,
by William Lanstone
Sky surging celestial,
Height hoarding inhumanoid,
Brazen raised deity of forgone days
Erased from heaven and hell, immiscible
With sensibility’s ideals,
You alone unfold, unreal
In modern mythophobia.
See here the Pale Maiden’s hand
on a lipstick brand icon, weaving worthlessness
among the masses, masquerading as meaning,
in all apparent essence unchanging, see her
silver shinning eyes on the blackened screen
Of a teenage tissue wielding torturee.
Or the Archer Afar loosing an arrow
To soar through the smoke-soaked sky
Unto an urban swarm, pointing to a subway
For a pension swung people on a Sunday, see him
Driving the nail of obedience upon the air
And swiping cards at the market square.
See the Goat Thing, charging the nearest wall
With a spoon to chunk the concrete, blasting
Fire and glass like a babbling blacksmith, hammering
At his own heart with a blistered hand, see his
Steel basket drawn long through stone and sand
To grovel for the gaze of a better man.
But greatness, clearly, never saved a soul.
His majesty miraculous escapes unceremonious
Like a common trickster through a trapdoor,
Fleeing gleefully from oh so secular lucidity.
The last electric echo of his everywhere words
Is the youth squeezed chords of a momentary monarch
With a ziplock bag bunched at his crown
Decreeing from the playhouse roof,
‘Look at me, I am king Zeus!’.
