The Helpless God

Black skies at noon

Slice through office blocks.

Up a forgotten passage

In a quiet doorway

A resting god

Opens its eyes

And follows the smog

To the edge of the last light

As the city is stoppered

With an ice black cork.

The god is tired of new lives –

It just wants this one

Plastic ruby eyes

Rimmed with gold leaf

Decide to halt

The descending wrath.

A man disturbs the god

As a tube light flickers on

A client has arrived

To buy space for Commerce One

The god shuts its eyes –

Arrested by the presence of a man

Rules oblige it to act

Only when it cannot be seen.

The wet cold plug expands

Sealing the city shut

Twenty million mouths turn blue

As a suffocated civilization ends.

Centuries later, steel drills at noon

Shatter through office blocks.

An expedition for oil strikes rich -

Thick fountains of chilled blood

Pirouette in the white, sun bleached sky.

Up a forgotten passage

In a quiet doorway

A resting god

Opens its eyes

And follows the whirling blades

To the edge of the red light.

A version of this poem (‘The Resting God’) appeared in Towers of Silence (a limited edition chapbook, published by Aark Arts).