Vox Populi
A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature. Over 16,000 daily subscribers. Over 7,000 archived posts.
Al Maginnes: God in Retirement
The sand here is dark, stained by eons of tides, climates, embers of footprints trailed by humans who, intent on self-immolation, find ways to make their small prints larger as they race for the first apocalypse they can find. Perhaps a shorter visit to the tropical universe or the one built after this one, the one still stocked with breathable air, with liquors able to give pleasure to a god. Still, this model survives, proof of some self-preservation in the populace. A little more wine before the sisters of the scarlet moon perform their ritual dance again. Still. There are mine shafts collapsed like veins, houses burning by the acre. Right now a man is paying more money for a gold chain than my neighbors earn in a year. He’ll wear it once or twice, toss it in a drawer of shiny things he’ll sell for four hundred bucks on a day when those few bills mean more than all the money he let slip from him back when it came in too fast to bother counting. The first shine from that trinket burns in the back of his eyes, climbs out of his gaze into the storm of atoms that spark the universe and takes its place among the aspirations illustrated by the sisters of the scarlet moon, who pour more wine, try to soothe god into sleep, leaving us with our self-made fires to burn our wounds clean, to illuminate our feet as we try again to follow the dance we will die trying to master.
Copyright 2022 Al Maginnes
Al Maginnes’s many poetry collections include The Beasts that Vanish (Blue Horse, 2021).
Vox Populi 
Al Maginnes,
I love that poem. It’s wonderful!
Peggy Britt
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks, Peggy. I love the poem as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person